


Who In Mortal Chains

by DinosaurTheology



Category: Star vs. The Forces Of Evil
Genre: Angst, Dark Magic, Djinni & Genies, F/M, Female Friendship, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Hurt/Comfort, Magic, Male-Female Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-22
Updated: 2017-02-26
Packaged: 2018-09-11 01:01:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 21,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8946934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DinosaurTheology/pseuds/DinosaurTheology
Summary: A powerful creature born out of the magical scrap-heap threatens Echo Creek. Their response to it defines Star Butterfly and Marco Diaz as people, friends and (just maybe) a little more.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Star was created by the awesome Daron Nefcy. I wanted to try a little something-something longer, again, and to ratchet up the stakes without losing at least some of the charm.

"Narwhal blast!" She dodges around a curving lance of flame.

"Cupcake blast!" Another snakes towards her. She barely makes the leap to dart aside.

"Stardust daisy devastation!" The next attack does strike home. It's a glancing blow that she does not duck under, in time, that clips the point off one of her headband's horns.

"Warnicorn maple honey baconade!" The creature sighs, seems to drink the ray of gleaming, golden energy and reflects its own burning breath back towards Star. Nothing really seems to slow this monster down, and what's worse is that some of her best spells look like they're actually making the stupid thing stronger. It's really, really annoying, and it really sucks.

Plus? Star wouldn't admit this to anyone, even under pressure from that freaking Truth or Punishment Cube, but... this is scaring the crap out of her and she doesn't quite know how to handle it.

The Echo Creek Academy football stadium stands ablaze. We were worried about whether or not the Opossums would have any chance against the Warriors this year, Star thinks. I guess that's not the number one worry, right now. It's sort of behind, like, running and screaming and not getting burned to a crisp. Those seem a little more pressing.

She sees Marco, out of the corner of her eye, pull a kid from their chemistry class out from under a smoldering hunk of wreckage. He uses the drag that they taught him in Rescue Scouts, clutching two handfuls of jacket and using his own body-weight to haul the limp form away from danger. Wouldn't have the heart to tell him, she thinks, even if I could right now. She's been around fighters her whole life, tough-as-nails men like the Royal Guards of Mewni, and been in enough scrapes of her own to know this: a body doesn't bend like the one her friend is dragging and then get back up. Not without some serious necromancy involved.

 _Be safe, Marco_ , she thinks towards him. _Be smart. Be the safe kid that you told me you were. Go to where I sent Jackie and Janna and put bandages on people that you can help instead of wrestling with people that you can't. I couldn't stand it if you got in the way of something you couldn't handle and... and... that happened to you. I couldn't. It would kill me just as sure as this monster might._

He doesn't hear her, of course, and might not even do what she said if he could. He might be the safe kid, sure, but Marco's brave as the boldest knight in Mewni, as River Johansen Butterfly himself. He would never run and hide while someone might need him; it wasn't in his nature. That's why he was so important to Star, after all. Why he was her best friend.

Why she loves him?

Star blinks. _Push that away, Butterfly. Put that one in your back pocket, for now. Maybe for always, right? Thinking cray-cray thoughts like that right now gonna get you roasted, girl. You've got to concentrate on the monster._

The monster. She doesn't know its name, they haven't been, like properly introduced or anything, but it looks like a sort of dragon, dog, elephant thing with its hair on fire. A pretty bold look, to be sure, but Star could take it or leave it. It flaps the enormous, leathery wings sprouting between its shoulder spines and, with a leap, lands on top of the burning bleachers. With a roar to the heavens, it unleashes another blast of fire that dances along the roof of the Echo Creek post office.

It sprouts little tendrils of flame, but the Echo Creek Fire Department is there in moments with their big, red engine to spray cooling water on them. Star can see them running around in their bright yellow turnout. They look for all the world like bumblees cross-pollinated with her mother's knights, or maybe a field of corn back home. They have this problem under control, can handle anything that crops up outside the stadium, but cannot draw close enough. It's warzone, in here, so hot that Star has even felt her own preternaturally tough Mewnian skin start to blister once or twice. She wouldn't want them here, in the middle of this, but she wouldn't mind some of that water.

 _Water_ , she thinks. _Water... now why didn't I think of that before?_

Oh. Yeah. Trying to survive, duh. Ducking, doging and fighting on instinct.

She remembers a spell from the book, now, one she's practiced with Glossaryk. "Spinning raisin rainbow tsunami!"

A jet of water, all seven bright colors of the rainbow, and thousands of raisins moving faster than bullets strikes the monster directly in its blazing chest. It hisses, shrieks and throws off a cloud of steam that boils the flesh off the bones of birds in the sky above it. The monster fights hard, and sweet Grandma Celena is it strong, but can only handle the agony for a few seconds. It flaps its enormous wings, again, and takes off for parts unknown. The crisis is, for the moment at least, over.

Star tries to smile but manages, at the very best, a crooked grimace. She slumps on what used to be the fifty yard line and surveys the ruin surrounding her. Scorched grass, twisted metal and dark, horrible lumps that might have, at once point, been her classmates. Tears threaten to spill from her eyes so she squeezes them shut. Be strong, Star, her mother's voice admonishes at the back of her mind. Moon Butterfly, true to her name, is stalwart and dauntless, forever and always.

Star, on the other hand, can be daunted all she wants, thank you very much, sir, and gives into wracking sobs. Today... has sucked. No. Seeing Marco with Jackie on their first date had sucked. Getting a knick when she shaves her legs sucks. This is a nightmare, something out of the most awful fevered dream a madman ever had on the longest, sweatiest summer night in history. So, yeah. "Sucked" doesn't quite start to cover it, but will have to do for the moment because it is all she can do to draw vile, oily air into her lungs. This is not an environment to breed eloquence to say the least.

And then he's there, kneeling by her. Marco holds Star close. She sags against him, clings to his soot smeared red hoodie, tries to speak and can't find words for what feels like an eternity. When she finally manages it, the Echo Creek FD's big truck has rolled into the remains of the stadium with its wailing siren and blaring air horn.

Yellow suited firefighters rush around them, spraying water and foam to suppress the fire while medics in dark blue shirts triage the wounded, dead and dying. A van from the local news stands off to the side, across the street, and an incident of this magnitude can't help but attract national media attention. It is attributed to an explosion in a gas line, and the pair of young people so close that they might as well be one body become the face of a tragedy. But none of this will happen until later. None of it is real until then.

She says, finally, in a halting tone, "Thank goodness you're okay. Janna and Jackie...?"

"Fine," he says. "Scared out of their minds but all right." He laughs, a little more wildly than Star likes. "Let's face it... I'm scared out of my mind, too." He scrunches his face up. Even in the midst of all this Star can feel her heart start to beat a little faster at the sight. "What about Miss Skullnick? I saw her jump out in front of that... thing... with the battle axe she bought from Quest Buy. It was one of the bravest things I've ever seen. Do you think she's...?"

Star shakes her head. "Trolls are almost impossible to kill. She might not be happy, for a while, but a full on blast from the monster wouldn't have done much more than give her a sunburn." Star has to giggle, and finds to her dismay that it sounds no less likely to degenerate into hysterial shrieking than Marco's laughter. "She sure gave it a surprise, though. Took a huge hunk out of one shoulder before I could even clear my wand from my purse. I think it might be the only reason I handled things as well as I did." She surveys the obliterated football stadium. "Not that I did, like, super well."

He strokes her hair. Although singed it still gleams in the dying firelight. "You did great. You did what no one else could, Star. What you always do."

She looks around dubiously. Before she can gainsay him, the air shimmers before her and Sir Glossaryk of Terms materializes from his portal. "Marco is right, Star," he says. "That creature was beyond anything you've faced before. It was even more dangerous than when your mother did battle with Toffee."

"Glossaryk!" She turns huge, pleading blue eyes on him. "Where were you? Why didn't you come sooner? People are... are..." She struggles with the word. "People are dead, here. That thing killed them! Your magic is so strong... where were you?"

"It's goetian resonance interfered with my ability to synchronize on this plane of being," he says.

She finally feels an emotional response that isn't numb horror or grief... unfortunately it's cold, dead confusion. "You did what with a goat, now? Was it Lil' Chauncey or his, y'know... ghost? A goaty ghost? Ghosty goat?"

"Goetian resonance," he says. "Basically, that thing's magical aura put up a blast shield in front of my usual path into this dimension. If I'd kicked it open I might have knocked all of this reality down. And believe me, kids and kidettes, you do not want to be a in a reality that's being knocked down. It tends to lose it's charm very quickly. Mostly because the concept of charm has, you know, ceased to exist."

"Not sure how it could be much less charming than what already happened," Marco said. "Jeez, how anything could."

"Imagine if this was everything," Glossaryk said, "and then wasn't... because everything wasn't there anymore and didn't even get replaced by nothing instead. That's what I'm talking about."

This strikes Star funny. She's so terrified that she won't stop laughing if she starts, however, that she bites her tongue and utters no more than a high, bright bray instead. The blood is coppery inside of her mouth. She says, "So, it could be worse, cause there could be less than nothing... but maybe now it'll get better. Cause Star saved the day. Yay."

"I think that it's got a good chance of getting worse before it gets better, Sunshine," Glossaryk says.

"What do you mean?"

"That monster you fought wasn't a monster. It was something called a djinn, a cosmic creature made from shards of broken magic. It's proper title was 'efret,' a being of living fire like your turbo nuclear butterfly blast."

"Great," Star says. "Nice to meet you, efret. Nice to freaking meet you."

"What did you think happened to the spells of warriors who came before you, Star?" he asks. "Warriors who fell in battle, whose magic couldn't be contained anymore. What do you think would happen to your warnicorns or narwhals if you died?"

"I dunno," she says. "I just sorta thought they would... you know..." She flaps her hands. "They would poof."

"Nothing just poofs, Star," he says. His voice seems unspeakably old, unknowably mournful. "Nothing just poofs. It's an unbreakable law of magic and the universe itself. Nothing ever just poofs and everything poops."

"Jeez. Also, ew."

"It gets better," Glossaryk says. "By which I mean worse."

"How could it possibly?"

"You didn't kill the efret," he says. "You just wounded it--probably making it extremely angry. And they always travel in pairs."


	2. Chapter 2

Later, in Star's room, four friends and a tiny blue wizard lounge around on pillows colored rose pink and cerulean. They are trying to figure out how their lives have changed since right before Echo Creek Academy's first bell of the day and coming up predictably short. How could any of them, on such short notice, deal with this?

 _We can't,_ Star thinks. _I know that I darned sure can't, at least. I'm the daughter of Moon the Undaunted... but wouldn't even Mom get a little bit daunty in the face of this thing? Its burny, creeply, elephanty face._ She sighs and blows an errant strand of golden hair out of her eyes. _When I was in the wand, I called myself "Star the Underestimated." I felt like I could take on the world, in there. I guess I could. It was my world, after all. Right now I feel like "Star the Unprepared."_ She winces. _Maybe I'm even "Star the Useless."_

A few cushions away, Jackie is curled with her head laid on Marco's lap. Although she has wiped the soot from her freckled cheeks, her huge, green eyes still reflect the blaze at Echo Creek's football stadium. "I just can't believe what happened," she says. "I mean, I was there, right? I remember running from that thing, rinsing the burns on our friends and teachers with those little bottles of saline from the nurse's office, yeah, I remember all that... but it doesn't feel real."

Marco toys with the lock of her hair dyed sea-green. "None of it does. I saw it, saw how Star drove it off, but I still can't believe it. Who could have imagined things like that existed?"

"Before you met me could you have imagined someone like me?" Star asks. "Or my wand? It's a big univese, Marco. There's apparently more stuff out there than we expected."

"It's because you're young," Glossaryk says. "There's always more out there when you're young because you haven't been around long enough to experience it."

"So you're saying that you expected that thing?" Marco asks.

"Er, no," he says. "The efret turning up here, in Echo Creek, on this day of this year was as much of a surprise to me as it was to any of the rest of you. Do you think I'd have been dorking around in the Sefirot of Hod with Hekapoo if I'd thought you were coming up against one of the djinn?"

"Of course not," Star says. "Right?"

"Right! My kids, my babies so to speak, were in grave danger and I couldn't make it back to you without making things infinitely worse. I knew the efret were out there, along with the ghul, s'ilat, marid and djann but couldn't have expected for one to appear today instead of any other day and here instead of any other place." He shrugs. "I see a lot of things, and I know a lot more, but sometimes the universe just pees in your pudding. Elyon of the Keter has a weird sense of humor."

There's a lot Star could ask here, a lot she probably could ask, but she seizes on one thing. "Hekapoo... that's your magic-fiery friend, right?"

"Yes," he says. "She normally hangs around in Muspelheim--she's not from there, originally, but it's her kind of town."

"Maybe we ought to bring her in on this, maybe?" Star says. "I don't know her well, but... if the efret thingies are broken shards of magic maybe they're her wayward spells, or pieces of them, and she might have the key to reigning them in."

Glossaryk strokes his beard with a six fingered hand. "Could be her," he says, "or any one of a baker's dozen more magi, wizards, witches, hougans and magical girl warriors with fire based powers. She'll know more about them than me, anyway, so I'll contact her."

"Get with that Omnitraxus, too," Janna says. She's been weirdly quiet when she's normally just weird. Star's glad to hear her voice. "His name literally means 'traces everything,' so I figure he might be able to help us out." When they peer at her curiously, she says, "What? I can't pay attention in Latin class? Besides... a creepy skull in a fishbowl has never lied to me before."

Star squeezes her tight. "Thank you, Janna. That is a great idea. Hugs."

"Yeah... no problem. En pee whatevs. I just want to help, you know? I wasn't much of one, earlier."

"Jeez, Janna," Star says. "I wasn't much of a freaking help earlier, for goodness' sake. Don't beat yourself up."

"I was totally useless," she says. "I pretend like I'm tough, or something. I've always been into creepy stuff, gross stuff, weird stuff... I follow #horror and bodyhorror on tumblr and post on /b/ and r/gore... all that stuff. What happened today, though, it freaked me all the way out. I couldn't handle it."

"You were bandaging people as fast as I could get them ready," Jackie says. "You even did my hand so I could keep working." She waves her right hand, her good hand. It's blistered pink, covered with thick, white blisters and a layer of bandages.

"You helped me, too," Marco says. "You came out on the front lines, almost to where Star was fighting that thing and helped carry people away from the worst of the fire."

"Yeah, that's where I saw some stuff," she says. "Stuff like my grandpa talked about from the war. Grandpa-war stuff. I mean, there was this one guy. His name's Tommy. Was Tommy?" She blinks her large, dark eyes. "Tommy. He's in my math class--he sits a few over from us Marco, remember him? Skinny kid with brown hair, always wears those anime t-shirts?"

"Yeah," he says. "Kind of a quiet guy."

"He's gonna be really quiet, now," she says. "I grabbed his arm like you showed me, the rescue drag?" When Marco nods she goes on. "He was so well done that his arm just sorta... pulled off his body when I grabbed him and tugged. It was like a freakin' luau, guys. It was bad. War stuff. Grandpa... war stuff."

She cradles her head in her hands. "I'm such a fake. Such a loser. I always thought I could handle anything... but I can't. Not when it's for real."

"Aw, honey." Jackie drapes an arm across her shoulders. Pain from her burned hand is written on her face. "Nobody can handle that kind of stuff without feeling like you do right now. You did so good."

"I guess. Star did all the real work," she says. "Star." She laughs, that hysterial laughter that Star had worried about coming from her own throat, earlier. "What's the chances it was here looking for her wand in the first place?"

The girl in question doesn't have an answer. She pouts, pensive, and looks into the depths of her wand. They sit in silence for a long moment before Glossaryk says, "Low. It isn't intelligent enough to have come looking for the wand... if anything it would have just sensed a large source of magic to feed on. More likely it was just blown here, like I said, on the cosmic wind."

Her three friends nod, seem to understand this and believe what Glossaryk is saying. Star hopes that she can, too. _Did I cause this?_ she wonders. _Is my presence here, on Earth, a danger to everyone around me? Everyone I care about? Does Mom ever have to worry about this kind of stuff? She always seems so sure of, like, everything._

Had she been, though? Star only knew her as a mother, as a queen, as Moon the Undaunted. Was there a time, perhaps when Lil' Chauncy was still around and she was at war with Toffee the Immortal, that Princess Moon Butterfly had felt as small as her daughter did right now? Had she ever needed a hug as bad as Star needed one right now _? Maybe that's when you came into the picture, Dad,_ she thought. _You give the greatest hugs._

Almost as great as Marco.

Star blinks and claps her hands over her mouth. She hadn't said that aloud, had she? It happened, on occasion, when she was musing or lost in a reverie. Or, once in a rare while, her thoughts would just sort of... creep out of her head in little bursts of stray magic and flutter around, causing trouble. It's where certain of her most potent spells had come from, originally, like the flying snail and rotating racoon.

No one is reacting. Thank everything that's good she doesn't seem to have blurted out something troublesome. Now it's time to push the thought away, to crush it down so that she doesn't make any mistakes with it. I _f there's one thing I am super awesome at_ , she thinks, _it's making mistakes. Especially at times like these_. There is something she has always been good at, though, or at least responsible about. She wonders if any of her spells, like the narwhals, could turn into these monsters if they were not carefully sequestered in the wand after each use. _Probably... which is why Mom and Glossaryk made sure I knew to put up my toys when I was done with them. My toys are the dangerous kind._

Glossaryk is speaking again. Star thinks it's probably a great idea to listen. “So,” he says. “There’s some pretty powerful juju going on, here. It’s not intelligent or making any evil plans or anything, thank goodness, or at least we don’t think it is, but we’re going to have to adjust our usual response to figure out how to deal with it.”

“What do you think will work?” Marco asks.

“We’re going to need the nightside,” he says.

Star wrinkles her brow. “Do the who now?”

“The Nightside. You know that the universe is a tree, right? A tree made up of other trees?”

“I hadn’t heard, but go on.” She smiles sort of wanly. “I like trees.”

“Well, the universe is a tree made up of trees--”

Marco cuts him off. “Sort of a vertical forest?”

“Kinda but no,” Glossaryk says. “No. It’s really great and cute that you’re trying, but no.” He strokes his beard. “The trees are composed of branches that are called various things. Those of us who play with magic for long enough usually call them sefirot, but other words can apply, too. There’s a topside of each sefirot, and a bottom side.”

He lets his hand hang in the air, a moment, and quaver. “A top side, and a bottom side. The top side has sunshine on it, right? I mean, that’s where the sun is, up top.” He grimaces. “Well, that’s usually where the sun is. From time to time, in one place or another, sometimes the sun is on the bottom. But that really queers our numbers, here, and I don’t have time to explain it. So just assume that even if the sun is on the bottom, for some reason, that the bottom is the top for our purposes. Savvy?”

“Not really,” Marco says, “but at least you’re not talking about pudding.”

“Oh no, the pudding is very important to this,” he says. “Very important. Anyway, where was I. Oh yeah, the sun is on the top. That’s where magic based on light, life and warmth happens. The things that usually come out of a Butterfly’s wand, all the way back to Celena the Shy.”

He pauses before going on. “The bottom... well, that’s where things get a little weird and wild. For if the top is day and sunlight then the bottom must be night, and with no moon to reflect the sun then that night can grow dark indeed.” He smiles, showing teeth that Star has never before noticed draw to points. “Most life dwells on the dayside, but there are nightside denizens... dwellers in the darkness. My old friends Ken, Jason and Jack studied it. Jack went insane, Ken was that way to begin with and Jason... changed. Let’s just say that he’s half the man he used to be and a whole lot more. The Typhonian currents surging there were a little too much for them.”

“Won’t they be for us, too?” Marco says. “This sounds dangerous.”

“More dangerous than the efret crashing your homecoming dance?”

Star can see him wrestle with the answer. He wants to say yes, that anything that might put Star in that kind of danger is too much and damn the consequences. _I really love you for that, Marco, I really do... but I love you even more for that grimace you’re wearing now. You’re thinking back on what the efret did today, how many people it hurt, and you know I have to do it. But you’ll do it with me and that’s all that matters. It’s all I need._

She asks, “If my wand is based on the dayside magic, the light and rainbows and puppies and stuff... can I even use the things from that nightside?”

“You can,” he says. “Butterfly magic, and Mewnian magic in general, are mostly based on the dayside. You people love puppies and unicorns and corn. But there have been a select few that dabbled in paths a little darker, even in the Butterfly family. They’ve thrown their shade on all of you since.”

“Dark? Butterfly family?” She blows a raspberry. “We don’t do dark. I don’t do dark.”

“Star,” he says. “Whose first boyfriend was a demon?”

“Oh, right.” She nods. “That could be a little bit dark, I guess. So...” She sighs and flops on her bed. “I guess we’re going to go into Grandma Eclipsa’s super creepy chapter in my book, right? When you said dark, I mean, all I could think of was ‘Eclipsa, Queen of Darkness.’ It makes a little bit of sense.”

“She’s a place to start,” Glossaryk says, “but no where near the end. We’re going to be traveling a little closer to home than your ten times great-grandmother. We’re going to be studying the darkest spell of them all.” He offers that wicked grin, again. “We’re going to take a look at the darkest spell of Moon the Undaunted.”


	3. Chapter 3

Much of that afternoon, afterward, they spend in conversation with anyone--anyone--who might know something about what had transpired in Echo Creek that morning. Glossaryk, true to his word, contacts Muspelheim through astral projection. It's easy, this time, though the qlippoth of the watery Earth and fiery home of Surtr and his legions do not generally communicate well with one another. There's a tantric connection between him and his target, though. That helps things, usually.

Although sometimes? It just makes it all so much more complicated.

He smiles and waves. "Hek, hi. Hi. How are you? Sorry about--"

The little flames dancing in her hair hiss and spit, but she does not immediately close the portal. That's a good sign. She does cut him off, though. "Sorry about what, Glossy? You left me in a little lurch earlier."

"Pressing business on Earth," he says. "You know that's where my--"  
"Where your princess dwells, yes." She scowls. "I thought it was a safe little backwater. Nothing interesting at all, you told me, just things even softer and weaker than mewmans. What could possibly have arisen to pull you away from me?"

"A pair of efret, Hekapoo," he says. "There are things Star isn't ready for, yet. She needed me."

The blazing--literally--eyes soften. "You are a man of your word, Glossy. I cannot imagine you leveling such an insult against me without good reason. Were... were your humans and mewman much hurt?""Many were in a rather small area," he says. "Some will need to climb on the wheel again. But that's not the important thing. Star handled herself well and wounded the creature; it fled, but I'm sure that it--and it's partner--will be back."

"No doubt," she says. A pale hand strokes the even paler face. "There may not be more than cinder and smoke left of that little town when they are done. I wish that I could do more to help you but..." She shrugs. "My powers would only complement their own. That conflagration might engulf that world entire."

"I know, Hek. Thanks for the thought."

"Have you considered having her summon a Jotun, or a member of the Thurse tribe? That would combat the efret most efectively."

"Yeah, no," he says. "Star's great at basic combat magic, like, really good. Like quicker than her mother good, but..." He tries to find a nice way to put it. "That level of enochian summoning is a little bit beyond her. We haven't even cracked the Lemegeton, yet."

"How about a troll? They're easy to conjure up, and almost easy to control. They get confused, easily, but nothing's perfect. Least of all a troll."

"Hek, I know you don't really have much in the way of an olfactory capacity, but... trolls smell terrible."

"Suit yourself, Glossaryk," she says. "No one is forcing you to use the most effective suite of the tarot to your advantage." She turns to go.

"Wait," he says. "Wait. Listen, I called mostly to ask you... do you have any idea whose magic this is running wild?"

"It could be a number of people."

"None of your spells running wild? Cause that would make things easier. You could just, you know, recall them or purge them or something. Easy-peasy, lemon-squeezy."

"I keep all my discharged spells, tulpas and servitors waiting in my hairpins until I need them again. You know that."

He sighs. "Just checking. It couldn't hurt to check, right?"

"No. But... if you want, I will ask around. There's a lot of irresponsible young people floating around these days, after all, playing with their tarot cards and Mewni boards. You never know what might happen."

"Thank you so much, Hek. You're a real doll, a peach."  
"No," she says. "I'm an ancient fire spirit that will one day burn much of creation in a fit of pique. You would do well to remember that, Glossaryk. But... in any case, you're welcome. I will be in contact." She does break the connection, this time, and he returns to his own blue skin, glad to be away from Muspelheim's blazing ground, sky, somehow even water... everything.

In her corner, the lady in question contracts her ex-boyfriend on her pink communicator compact. Her mom's darkest spell is a cthonic secret, and no one would have a better understanding of something like that than one of the Underworld's demon princes. "Calling Tom," she says. "Are you there, Tom? I know you're always there at this time of day, er... your day/night cycle, at least. You always get online and play Overwatch with those really uptight fundamentalist kids cause you like trolling them. Answer me!"

His horned visage flickers into view. "Whoa, Starship... you're the one always saying that I'm out of control. What's happening, babe?"

"Number A," she says, "I am not your babe and letter two... a fiery, angry, elphant thingie attacked today and--"

"'Fiery angry elephant thingie?' I am not going to answer you if you're just calling about your pizza dreams, Starship."

"This is serious, Tom! People got hurt. Some of them even died."

"I know," he says. "We had a big shipment, today. Dad made me process them in, get them in the system."

She doesn't rise to this particular bait. "If you know what, then maybe you know more about what happened. Maybe business was a little slow, hmm? Your powers are all fire based, Tom."

"Okay, letter one my fires are illusory, and number B, we don't use efret, down here. Or any of the djinn, for that matter. They're all little better than wild animals... worse, even. Animals can be trained not to crap on the carpet, after all. Djinn just exist to wreak havoc."

"It's... because we made them to, Tom. We made them like they are."

"Come again?"

"All of our spells. The djinn are scraps of our loose magic that take life and seem really, really resentful."

"None of my magic," he says. "I keep my trash policed. It's right here." He points to his third eye. "I would have thought you were more careful than that too, Starship."

"I am," she says. "Usually... but..."

"But?"

"Sometimes a little gets away from me, okay? Like when I destroyed Ludo's castle. Er, Toffee's castle. Luffy's castle? No, that sounds like a One Piece, Miyazaki crossover. Whatever. When I destroyed that castle, to save Marco... I didn't collect some of my magic. I lost a whole piece of my wand!"

"Your wand? Heavy."

"Yeah," she says. "You're one of the only 'magical' people that I've told. It's not common knowledge yet, so don't--"

"Don't worry about it," he says. "Your secret is safe with me... and I assume whoever else you told." He sighs. "So... since I'm assuming you didn't call me just to confess your possible guilt in something you don't really believe is your fault anyway--and don't contradict me, the Star I know you and the self-flagellation would be way worse if you did... well, what's the sitch?"

"You're a prince of the underworld, a child of Kutha Gadua. I need my mom's darkest spell, the one she used to defeat Toffee. She didn't write it down, probably didn't want it falling into the wrong hands, and since it's the darkest spell..." She shrugs. "I figured you might know."

"I don't know the details," he says. "It's not like your mom and I are besties and she tells me all her secrets about highly confidential spells, or anything, but I do have a pretty good notion. Toffee is a magical regenerator, right?"

"A whoozy?"

He rolls all three eyes. "When you blast part of him it grows back by magic."

"Yuppers."

"Then I'd bet your mom's darkest spell is some kind of anti-magic field that she used to seal him. You're going to need to craft a very strong vessel with anti-magic properties for these efret and... I'd make sure it was pretty heat resistant, too."

"Come again?"

"Even if their magic is dampened, their sheer heat could shatter something that wasn't ready for them. Efret are crazy dangerous. You might only get one chance at this, Starship, so do it right."

"Crazy dangerous, do it right," she says. "Check. Got it. So... how do I make the anti-magic thingie? The net or bottle or coffee cup or whatever?"

"Well, I wouldn't go with a coffee cup," he says, "and beyond that I cannot help. I've never done this. You're gonna need your little blue friend."

"Glossaryk? He knows about anti-magic and magic? Wow."

"Anti-magic is magic."

"Then they should just call it... y'know... magic."

"They should, shouldn't they?"

"And Glossaryk has done this before?"

"He's trapped a lot of djinn. Do you know someone named Omnitraxus? How do you think he got in that fishbowl?"

"I thought he just kinda... came that way."

"No one comes in a fishbowl, Starship. Just... get Glossaryk to explain it to you and be careful." He glances over his shoulder. "Got to go. Dad still has me on the orientation committee and some newbies just arrived--high speed chase and the criminals' car crashed into a fire hydrant. Remember... you only get one shot, Starship. I'll be thinking of you."

The screen goes dark. Star glances across the room, to where Glossaryk is still medidating. She feels, somehow, better. This is gonna be hard, sure, but it's not going to be impossible. There's a chance of victory!

Star lays two fingers on Glossaryk's small shoulder. "So," she asks. "How we gonna do this thing? What kind of vessel are we talking, here? Mewnian frigate in a bottle, maybe?"

"It can be various things," he says. "The traditional method in most planes of existence is an oil lamp. They tend to be small, easily portable and generally inconspicuous enough that just any old sprite, fairy or brownie won't pick them up."

"Oh!" Marco says. Sudden realization dawns on his face. "A genie in a bottle. I get it."

"Yeah, Marco," Glossaryk says. "Good one. Try to keep up, kid... and don't refer to a djinn as a genie. It'll rip your face off." He tugs at his beard. "Okay, so it'll rip your face off anyway, but it'll be really angry doing it if you call it a 'genie.'"

Star's face has fallen. "Oil lamp. Ugh. My fingers are gonna get all greasy."

"Maybe it won't be so bad," Jackie says. "You can wear gloves, or something."

"Ooh, or maybe you can make it an enchanted coffin, instead," Janna says. "Or would that only work for vampires? I wish we were fighting a vampire; they're sexy."

Star grins. "Dead sexy?"

"You know it girl. What do you think, Jackie?"

She shrugs, eyes Marco and winks. "I don't know, guys. I think a prefer a guy with a little bit of motion in his bloodstream, you know."

Janna blows a raspberry. "Yuck. Boring old living guys."

"Well, it doesn't have to be an oil lamp," Glossaryk says. "It can be most anything. I've seen djinn trapped in crystals, pottery... one time some guy used a bowling ball. He was in a league and it attacked the alley they were playing in and..." He shrugs. "It just seemed like the thing to do at the time. I... you know what? Don't worry about it. I'll come up with something. You--" He points directly at Star, taps his finger on the tip of her nose. "You concentrate on dipping down deeper than you ever have, dipping into the nightside so that you can force it into whatever vessel we craft. Got it?"

"Got it." She says. A smile spreads across her face. "Got it good, boss." This feels great. It is great. For the first time on this horrible day it seems like victory is possible.

And then, as suddenly as it came, the sense of possible victory turns to ashes in her mouth. The bellowing comes from the direction of downtown Echo Creek, and the crashing, the screams, sirens and horrible waves of heat.

The efret have returned


	4. Chapter 4

The bike ride downtown feels like the longest three and a half miles that Star can remember. The sidewalk in front of them stretches on forever, glares with unforgiving sunlight in the late afternoon sun. _It never seems this long when we're on our way to the post office or something, or to get ice cream._ She ponders this for a moment. _Well, it does seem like a pretty long time when we're on our way to get ice cream. I always really want some ice cream by that point and... yeah._

She rides behind Marco. Her arms are wrapped tightly around his waist, her face presses against the soft, red fabric of his hoodie. She sees Jackie's bike to the side of them, slightly behind. Ocean girl might be dynamite on a skate or surf board but no one can ride a bicycle like Marco Diaz. _Maybe cause skate boards and surf boards are just... newer than bikes, maybe. Bikes can be kinda old fashioned, y'know, comparatively. It's the kind of old fashioned that never goes out of style, though. The classic kind._

Janna rides behind Jackie like she does Marco, hanging on for dear life in this headlong rush towards mortal danger. Showing that fierce intelligence she hides so often behind a shield of macabre humor, Janna has converted her backpack into a first aid jump kit. Gauze and bandages whip out of it in long streamers, and Star can see the cap of a sterile water bottle peeking out from the black canvas.

 _That's smart,_ Star thinks. _There's going to be people hurt, people who need all that, and a lot more of them than at the football stadium. Downtown Echo Creek isn't a huge city by any means but... it's got the Mewni Castle Town beat during the late afternoon burrito time. Even after this morning... maybe especially after this morning. What would make you feel better than a burrito, right? A sugarito, even._

She sighs. _Smart and courageous. You are all everything a good soldier needs to be, all without my asking._

Marco, having either felt her shift with the sigh or just sensing her mood, says, "It's gonna be okay, Star. You chased off the efret this morning, you'll do it again. You can do anything."

"Can I though, Marco?" She blows an errant strand of golden hair out of her eyes. "Cause from where I'm sitting, it looks like my wand does everything. The wand. All I do is hold it. I don't do jumpskis."

"You mean bupkis?"

"Eh, we say jumpskis on Mewni. You don't even wanna know what bupkis means."

"That bad, huh?"

"Like the 'f' word and 'c' word had a baby that grew up all angry and ugly," she says. "Mom told me if I ever said it she'd wash my mouth out with warnicorn soap."

"Sounds serious."

"You had better believe it." She squeezes him tighter for a second almost too brief to register. "You're so brave, Marco. All of you. I have my wand, but you're just rushing in after this thing behind me."

It's Jackie, this time. She calls from her bike. She seems to have watched their ride carefully, how tightly Star clings to him. "We're your friends, Star. We can't let you do something this dangerous alone. You know that, right?"

"And besides," Janna says. "Earth is our home. Echo Creek is our home. We have skin in this game."

"What?" Star takes an instant to scratch her head. "Who in the where now? What's wrong with your skin, Janna? I thought Jackie was the only one of us that got burned, this morning."

She chuckles. "It's an expression, Star. Kind of like when you said that you thought you could call this place home. Well, we already do."

"Yeah," she says. "That's right. You already do. You love the Earth like Mewmans love a field full of corn."

"Exactly," Marco says. "And any one of us would die to protect it." He laughs. "Talking like that I'm gonna lose my reputation as the safe kid, huh?"

"You're always gonna be the safe kid," Star says. "I always feel safe with you."

He doesn't know how to respond to that, judging by the slight tension in his back and shoulders. They ride in silence a while until they reach Echo's Creek's humble downtown. Chaos reigns supreme, there, under the aegis of the efret. Both have arrived, now. One swoops and swirls high in the air. Gouts of flame spout from its trunk and trail from the tips of its wings. Air near it shimmers in the heat. _I so know you, buddy,_ Star thinks. _And by that patch on your belly that isn't on fire right now... heh. I bet you remember me, too. Glad to konw my spells are good for something._

Its partner, by contrast to the first efret's fanciful, elephantine shape, hugs the ground and keeps the long, bat-like wings folded close against its body. The face is dark with a short snout and long tusks and, like the first, smokeless flame seems to creep from every crevice in the creature's frame. They turn to observe the newcomers. The one on the ground bellows its challenge, and the mate above shrieks a trumpeting reply.

Star feels her eyes grow wide, and then teary at the heat and acrid scents on the air. "Oh," she says. "Oh, bupkis."

Bodies lie near the beast, unlucky citizens caught out on the worst day in Echo Creek's history and police officers who have dared to balk the efret's fury. They've fallen victim to it, instead. Some have been burned by the raging, elemental fire, others rent by cruel, hooked claws. One or two still move weakly, but Star doesn't hold much hope for their long-term survival. _If I could do anything for you people I would_ , she thinks. Especially you, Echo Creek police. _You've always been so understanding, even when I probably didn't deserve it._ She hardens her resolve, wills her face to grow steely. _The best I can do at this point is to make sure that you haven't sacrificed yourselves in vain._

The fight proceeds much as the one at Echo Creek Academy's football stadium. Star knows what to expect now, that the efret are creatures of flame and only her water spells, or smothering spells or those with a strong kinetic effect will be of any use. She modulates her strategy, weaves and dances through the fire, plays strong defense and takes a shot or two when she gets them. _It's like that sport you taught me, Marco. Basketball. The one your cousins played before they left home to become warriors, how it taught them the nature of strategy and warfare. Gotta play the long game_. She's willing to be patient, no matter how strongly this goes against her nature.

But there are two of them. Two of the cursed things. If the basketball analogy holds true... she's on a team with five players, the efret have ten and all of them are seven feet tall. Star has been caught at both ends, pulled, and finds that the center cannot hold for long. The wand starts smoking. Spells have flown so fast and furiously that she does not know how long it will be before she has to recharge them. Broken narwhals flop in puddles long since boiled to steam, and warnicorns limp sadly here and there. She's drawing down to her last spells, knows she needs to dip down and feels the pressure mounting so high that she cannot imagine how she will manage it.

Marco, Jackie and Janna do not neglect their part in matters, either. Janna sets up a first aid station, well away from the carnage. Marco and Jackie dash back and forth between the battle lines and their aid station, triage the wounded and drag those who can be helped to as much safety as possible. It's not much. So few of the afflicted are even viable, and fewer still can be helped by the meager bandages and bottles of clean water that they' brought but... Star nods. _It's something, guys, and every little bit helps. We're supposed to be fighting evil, or something, and that's what it looks like to me._

At the aid station, Janna works furiously. She sterilizes patches of burned flesh with the bottles of water, presses 4x4 gauze pads against anything bleeding and wraps the all too common sprains and broken bones. _She hasn't ever done anything like this before,_ Star reflects, and people here aren't brought up expecting to get pressed into service as a field medic before the age of sixteen. She's got a talent for healing, though. Star offers the smaller girl a thumbs up before returning to the fray and hopes it will be enough to buoy her through this dark time.

Marco, true to his Scout training and reputation as the Safe Kid, darts between piles of flaming rubble and kneels between each of the wounded in turn. He listens carefully at the chest for breathing, and if none is present he tilts the head back so that any minor obstruction can be cleared from the airway. If the spirit still no longer moves in that particular chest, Marco assumes that it has departed and moves on to the next person.

As long as breath dwells, though, he uses one of the methods he has learned from the Scoutmasters and Echo Creek Emergency Services instructors to give each victim the best possible chance at survival. Most are removed via rescue drag, as Marco is not a large person, but the smallest, the really little kids out for ice cream, he removes with a fireman's carry across his shoulders. This leaves his legs unencumbered, promotes greater speed. _And why are they even out today, after what happened this morning?_ Star asks herself. _Oh. Yeah. Nothing to worry about after the "freak accident" at the stadium, right? Just a random quirk of fate or mechanical failure, aint nothing but a thang. Blindness to magic and its effects can be far, far more dangerous than the magic itself. That's what you told me once, Mom, isn't it?_

She watches him wrestle with a tall, burly Echo Creek policeman. She thinks that his name is Sergeant Mendez, but cannot recall with one hundred percent accuracy. She knows that he is one of those who helped her after she ran away from home, after destroying a police car. _Maybe I should have stayed away,_ she thinks. _Maybe none of this would have happened._ She knows what Glossaryk said, yeah, but... that doesn't make watching this any easier.

The man is too heavy for the carry or drag, so Marco manages to lift him up enough to attempt an assisted walk. It's awkward with three legs, but at least the sergeant's injury has been cauterized well enough that he is not hemorrhaging from the ragged end of his left thigh. Seeing the difficulty that they are in, Jackie darts from where she has been assessing a couple in their early twenties, drapes the policeman's other arm across her neck and helps them towards the aid station. _Stay safe, you guys._ Star squeezes her eyes shut, and hates herself a little for what she thinks next. _And especially stay safe, Marco. If it's a choice between you and... I don't think I could live without you._ It's an awful, awful thing to say, even locked as it is in the depths of her own skull, and Star knows that she will end up punished for it.

She just doesn't know how soon.

Something roars behind her, squeals and brays all at once. The air is torn by heat and rushing air. Star turns around, intent on returning to her task and challenging the efret, or at least deflecting its attack. That's when the blast of flame from an efret, she never knows which one, takes her full in the chest. She drops the wand. A ball of fire engulfs her, and everything in the world turns red.


	5. Chapter 5

It all just sort of happens at once. Hell breaks loose, the world totally loses its mind and, afterward, no one really knows what exactly has happened. It's the madness that grows only out of war, or love, or the absolute best of office Christmas parties. The universe seems like it drinks a little too much, drinks a little more, puts a lampshade on its head and dances like no one is watching.

There are witnesses to this impossible event--to all the impossible events that have come beofre it, too. Sergeant Mendez is a trained observer but cannot believe his eyes in the face of this lunacy. His report stretches on for more than twenty pages. His superiors at the Echo Creek Police Department, already struggling to cope with two separate gas line explosions and the subsequent conflagrations on one day, do not know quite what to make of it. Sergeant Mendez, after all, is a sober peace officer. These are the ravings of a madman.

Mendez' captain, another longtime veteran who once worked in the much more stressful, more intense San Diego Police Department, shakes his head and says of the sergeant, "Poor guy just got, like, unhinged by all that happening. Think about what he must have saw, the dead and dying people, all those hurt kids. No wonder he was seeing dragons and monsters. Jeez, I might have been, too. Any of us."

Mendez takes six weeks of compassionate leave, to heal the hurts to his body and mind. He never works on the streets again, but does teach at the Echo Creek Police Academy for some time before leaving law enforcement all together. Afterwards he spends a lot of time practicing his photography skills, leaves Echo Creek for parts unknown and eventually writes a book on fortean phenomena. He never quite understands what happened to him that fateful day in the downtown district of his former town, though.

That's pretty understandable, actually. Marco doesn't really know what happens, either, and he is the one at ground zero of it. He is doing well--they are doing well, all of them--when the unthinkable happens. One of the efret unleashes a lance of flame that spikes Star through the chest. She stiffens in agony, blazes bright for a moment and then collapses. The Star has gone nova and died. Now she lies there still, a smoldering small ember, and Marco cannot tell if she is breathing or not. The wand lies a few inches from her motionless hand.

The efret that has already done so much damage to his city, to his best friend, lurches over to her on the tips of its folded wings. This is the more terrestrial of the two creatures, the one whose face glares like the summer nightmare of a rabid pit bull. It lowers its short, blazing snout to Star's limp form, nudges against her, and then throws its head back with a series of loud, coughing barks. Its companion, wheeling on high, shrieks in response. The signal seems clear: this powerful, magical being is finally safe to feed on.

Marco charges it. Janna cries out, and Jackie reaches for him, but he brushes both words and her hand away _. I don't know what I'm going to do, he thinks, but I've got to do something. Star would do something. Even if it's just dying with her, I'd die everyday without her if I..._

He pushes the thought away. The efret, disturbed before it can begin its feast, tilts its head to peer curiously at him. The monster seems patient, willing to observe how this will play out, hoping it will not interrupt his feast for too long. Marco is not the dangerous one, after all. He has no magical power. The threat is removed, lying wounded at tips of the efret's claws. He still does not have any plan beyond "Do not let this thing eat Star." He does not know what he can do.

It's lucky for them all that Marco's Monster Arm, on the other hand, seems to have some notion in mind.

The slippery, slate-grey tentacle lashes out, faster than he'd remembered, and strikes the efret on it's deep chest. Monster Arm hisses and smokes for a second, but the efret bounces away wailing. "Like that?" Marco shouts. "How about picking someone your own size, ya... ya... freak!"

The efret who'd injured Star struggles to its feet, shakes its head, looks for all the world like Marco does after a particularly bad encounter at full-contact karate. The airbound creature shrieks, enraged now, and launches a firebolt towards them, Marco and Monster Arm, like the one that had hit Star.

Monster Arm whips through the air again, spins Marco ten feet off the ground and dodges the fireball with the kind of agility normally reserved for severely underage looking Chinese gymnasts. Monster Arm is the one that laughs this time, the one that cries out, "That all you got, beeyotch? I thought you were special, I thought you were fly. You aint jack sh--"

The efret drowns out Arm's erudite commentary with a howl of fury. It retreats higher into the sky, frustrated at an opponent that can be cowed with neither flame nor talon. Arm laughs, exulting in his victory. He reaches out and snakes around the downed efret, slithers across it's torso and traps the long, scrawny arms. The efret struggles, cannot gain ground against the sinuous, inescapable muscle.

Arm opens his maw, licks lips that conceal far too many teeth that are far too sharp, so many that it would shame a shark. "Awright!" he crows. "Now it's time for me to eat some bowels!"

"I'm not even sure that thing has bowels," Marco says. "Just... do something with it so we can check on Star."

"And eat her bowels?"

"What do you think?"

"I'm thinking 'no,'" Arm says, "but that you couldn't do a whole lot to stop me if I wanted to."

"Wouldn't that, like, defeat the purpose of why you came out in the first place? Didn't you come out to save Star?"

"Naw, dawg," Arm says. "I came out to eat bowels." He drops the efret. It limps away trailing little tongues of flame and manages, after a few steps, to launch itself into the sky. It flies after its partner weaving drunkenly but gaining altitude and speed as the after-effects from Arm's cruel embrace begin to subside. "Man, please... if I knew you were gonna be like that I'd have just let that efret do its thing. At least somebody would have gotten some bowels."

"You've got a fixation, you know that?" Marco tries to flap his arms in frustration. One of them obeys; the other fixes him with an expression of bemused annoyance. "You need a more balanced diet, dude."

"I get a balanced diet! I eat small intestines and large intestines. That is as balanced as you can be!"

"I meant, like, fruits and vegetables or something."

"Yuck!" Arm pulls a face. "That is uncool, man, most uncool." He casts his gaze around. "What about all these dead-assed folks? They won't miss their bowels any. I mean, they look a little crispy but... what the hell. I like fried food."

“No!” Marco shouts. “You cannot do this, Arm!”

“Yes I can!” he shouts back. “Look, you think I came shooting out of my comfy little pocket dimension in your body to save people? Dude, I don’t like people, I like people’s offal! I’m a people-offal eater!”

Arm begins snaking towards a fallen pedestrian. Marco struggles against it, heaves with all his mgiht, but cannot seem to gain any traction against this deadly manifestation of dark magic. _We've had more than our fair share of those, today,_ he thinks. A grimace spreads across his face. He was exhausted, Arm was starving and... there was really nothing he could do. _I know that we share a stomach and all but... I really, really hope that I don't taste any of this. Now all I need is for Naysaya to pop up and start chiming in with his opinions._

Suddenly, it was over as quickly as it had begun. He sees her, out the corner of his eye, struggle to her knees, sweep up her wand and say, "Returnio armius normalrino!"

The lance of bright pink energy strikes Monster Arm right below his mouth. The tentacle struggles, groans and flops while transfixed by it. Finally, Arm slaps limp against the pavement. He moans, seems to be in agony. “No,” he says, “no, no, no, no. Looks like no bowels for me to-”

The comment is cut off by Monster Arm returning to normal. Marco sighs and sinks to his knees. He is relieved in spite of his arm’s current state, blistered, blackened in more than one place and twisted at an angle appropriate for the alien geometries in one of H.P. Lovecraft’s stories. Perfect pain, bright crisp and clear, permeates each element of his being with torments both gross and subtle. It could be worse, though, he thinks. I could be vicariously eating some poor guy’s bowels.

Star hobbles to him, half kneels-half collapses herself, and sags against Marco’s good shoulder. “So... what’s new? Had anything cool happen today? Like, y’know, maybe a demonic tentacle showing up at the best possible time and saving us?”

“Kinda sorta,” he says. “I think we were collateral damage... er, that’s not right. What’s the opposite of collateral damage. Collateral saving?” He shakes his head. “What I’m saying is that I’m pretty sure arm just wanted some bowels.”

“I know he did,” Star says, “but that doesn’t mean I’m any less glad he showed up. I’d rather have him around than the efret, if you know what I mean.”

“Kind of the devil we know instead of two we don’t, eh?”

“Yeah,” she says. “I don’t know what we’d do if you had two monster arms.”

“I’d be on a seriously ketogenic diet.” He laughs, feels that edge of madness creep into it again and forces it away. “So, how was your afternoon?”

“Oh, you know... burned by a magical, smokeless flame and almost eaten. The usual.”

“Yeah. No biggie.”

“Right!” She giggles, actually seems giddy. This must be a side effect of being alive when you shouldn’t. “I’m glad we got arm under control, again. Going out to dinner with you would really suck with him around.”

“Yeah,” Marco says. “Yeah... but at least I wouldn’t have to worry about you snitching food off my plate.”

“Ew, no. That would not be happening.”

“You sure? I mean, it’s not all bad. Abuelita used to make some seriously good menudo, and it’s kind of the same idea.”

  
“Not nearly the same idea, Marco,” she says. “Just... not at all.” Their faces have drawn near to each other. Her words pass across a space close enough for the breath to press silken flower petals against his face. She is, in spite of the smudges of blood and grime, close to the most beautiful thing he has ever seen. Golden, singed hair billows around her face and drapes across his shoulder when she leans forward. Her eyes contain a multiverse, pale columbines on a hillside rife with possibility.

Janna’s voice arrests them a millimeter from each other’s lips. It is, possibly, for the best.

 _If that’s so_ , Marco wonders, _then why do I feel so much like going up there and twisting her little head off?_ He shakes his head. _Well, more than usual._

She calls again. “Did you hear, guys? Did you hear what I said? Glossaryk called. He used some magical... magicky thing... to make my pocket Ouija talk to me. My friend Zozo is going to be so pissed that he got tossed out on his ear but... what can you do, right?” She offers an exaggerated shrug. “Anyway... Glossaryk needs us back, like, now-ish if not sooner.”

Jackie appears beside her. Marco wonders for a fleeting moment if she saw the almost kiss and a deep part of him, locked away under piles of Mackie Hand movies and lying snuggled up against his Monster Arm, doesn’t really care. Probably not, judging by her smile, Marco thinks. He has the in-born decency to feel ashamed, and Star’s blush hearts shimmer brightly. It could, however, just be the stress of the day... there’s no way to know.

Jackie calls out to them. “What she means to say, you guys, is ‘oh, wow, thank God you’re okay! That was a close one!’”

“Of course I meant that,” Janna says. “Duh. It goes without saying.”

“Saying what we feel is important, Janna.”

She shrugs. “Meh. That’s what I have John Keats for. Or will, I guess, once I get my pocket Ouija in working order and get back in touch with him.”

“So,” Star says, “just to be, like, super clear... you’re super glad we’re okay, or at least okay-ish, which is awesome, and Glossaryk needs to see us.”

“Long and short of it, yeah,” Jackie says. She tosses her blonde and sea-foam hair, surveys the wreckage. “Jeez... what a mess.”

“Did he maybe, like, mention what he needed to talk to us about?”

“It’s the vessels,” Janna said. Her grin is bright, wide, nearly feral. “The ones we’re going to use to trap the efret.”

Star heaves a sigh of relief. Beside her, Marco follows suit. It’s the second best news he’s heard all day. The first? That Star had not been injured in the efret’s blast of fire, obviously. That and when he’d looked into an endless garden of hyacinth blue eyes.


	6. Chapter 6

It doesn't take long to reach Star's room, again. They find Glossaryk hovering there, above the edge of her bed. A tan and umber swirled marble cutting board pilfered from the kitchen lies below him, acting as a makeshift slab for eldritch intent, and on it sit two pudding cups. One is chocolate mousse, the other vanilla tapioca. Glossaryk levitates in the half-lotus position, bright eyes crawling across each of their faces in turn. His graveyard countenance keeps any of them from giggling at the inanity of the tableau and, yeah, Marco figures... it does look pretty silly.

She finally speaks. "So, Glossaryk... we, uh... we doing something, here, or did you just finally go totally nuts?"

He lets his eyes slip shut. "What do you see?"

"Are..." Her brow wrinkles in worry. "Are you, blind or something? Is it magical blindness?"

"No," he says. His voice grows deeper, softer, solemn and sinister. "What do you see?"

"Y'want like, a list or... is this one of those metaphor things?"

"What. Do. You. See?"

She shrugs. "I don't know. I have had a super hard day. I just watched my home away from Mewni get blasted to pieces, got nearly burned up by something out of Grandma Eclipsa's worst nightmare and it tried to eat me. I'm not seeing much but my bed, right now, but I know I can't just flop in it and sleep like I want to so, so badly. For one cause those efret guys are still out there, just waiting to come back, and for another... you've got pudding all over my bed. Glossaryk, why is there pudding all over my bed?"

"That's kind of obvious," Marco says. "The stress of the day has finally driven him around the bend. I mean, it's no surprise. Wasn't, like, a super lengthy drive in the country anyway. Probably closer than El Segundo."

The tiny wizard fixes him with an adamantine glare. Marco opens his mouth to say something else, but hushes when Jackie pinches him sharply on the soft flesh of his flank. His hand finds hers and their fingers interlace, as much to keep him safe from any more admonishment as anything else. It feels good... safe.

_It feels safe_ , he thinks, and _I'm the safe kid, right? Then what the heck happened to me earlier, with Star... and why did it make me feel so alive? I'd say every inch of me felt on fire, but I've been too close to way too much fire today to appreciate that particular metaphor_. He blinks, shakes his head to clear the cobwebs that have gathered there. _Must be Monster Arm. He brings out my wild side as sure as he'd like to bring out everyone else's digestive tracts._

Glossaryk speaks. "You see, you all see. But you don't observe. What is on the bed?"

"Two pudding cups," Janna says.

He nods. "Precisely."

She pumps her fist. "All right! Score one, Janna." She slips a book with black covers from her backpack and kisses it. Marco notices that the golden lettering of the title reads My First Necronomicon: A Primer in Necromancy for the Teen on the Go. "You just can't beat Myfo Necro for all your dark magic needs."

"Okay," Glossaryk says, "one, we're gonna have to talk about Janna's taste in reading materials, and two... do any of you get the significance of the two pudding cups?"

"Well, duh," Janna says.

"Apart from Janna," he says. "You have the cheat sheet, remember?"

"I think you just like pudding," Marco says, "and that you might not actually know what the heck you're talking about... but I think that a lot when we're at this point, so don't mind me."

"I won't, oh ye of little faith in magic," Glossaryk says. "Because obviously the most powerful occult mind in the multiverse can be understood at a glance by some... peon in a red hoodie. Obviously."

Before Marco can offer his retort, continue the nigh endless verbal sparring that crops up between Glossaryk and him during times of stress, Star speaks. "They're the vessels. They're the enchanted vessels that we're going to trap the efret in."

"Bingo, bongo!" Glossaryk says. He snaps his long, blue fingers. "Give the lady a cigar... no, don't, they smell awful and they're bad for your health." He stares into her eyes. "How did you figure it out, Star?"

"Context clues, for one thing," she says. "I mean, we're kind of in a bind... even you wouldn't be doing riddles at a time like this. Well, not much... you already did a little. You do love you some riddles."

He shrugs. "It's true. What else?"

"My wand," she says.

"Yes?"

"It's... dead, right now. Everything's asleep in it. My narwhals are all exhausted, my warnicorns can't get a single rep with the empty bar... even Spider With a Top Hat is out cold. At first I figured that they were justs, y'know, tired but... it's more than that. They couldn't wake up if you offered em cupcakes, and they love cupcakes like you love riddles and, er... pudding. Plus I feel something tugging at it, towards those pudding cups."

They stood on the bed, twin plastic omens of a dying age. "No wonder this was Mom's darkest spell... jeez. I can hardly stand to be around them."

"She had to use it, Star, just like you're going to have to," Glossary says. "Toffee's regenerative power was too much, otherwise... she had to strike him with a weapon crafted out of pure anti-magic, and even it wasn't enough, as you can see. He came back, after all."

"That he did." She sighs, sags, and Marco remembers how small she really is, how delicate she can seem when she's not blasting monsters left and right. "Was Toffee one of those, y'know... djinn dealies?"

"He is a monster," Glossaryk says, "and all monsters are of the djinn, though of a weak type known as the nasna or animal man."

"So he's a nasna?"

"No, not Toffee," Glossaryk says. "He is of a more dangerous breed known as the hinn--a clever beast capable of great mischief."

"So like these efret," she says, "just less flamey."

"More or less."

"And I've got to figure out how to trap them in your pudding cups."

"You can do it, Star. Your mother managed."

"I don't know if you've noticed, big, er... little guy, but I'm way not my mom."

"No, Star, you're not," he says. "You're something even better... you're yourself. Star Butterfly."

She snorts. "Yeah. Star the Underachieving."

"I think more like Star the Unstoppable," he says. "But what do I know. I'm just the living avatar of all occult wisdom. It's not like I could possibly have anything to contribute in this kind of situation."

"Point taken," Star says. "I'm gonna just hope that you're right."

On the other side of the room, in their own world, Jackie tends to Marco's arm, burned, bruised and battered in the fray. She gently fingers the raised blisters, washes them with their supply of bottled water and spreads salve across the pink, tortured flesh. She offers the lopsided grin that he cannot get enough of. It makes her freckles all bunch together, over her nose, and an already pretty face transform into something sublime.

"Jeez, dude," she says. "I know you're, like, into martial arts and stuff but... karate chopping a big, flamey guy like that? It doesn't seem super intelligent. Barely even duper. You are so gonna lose your rep as the safe kid."

He winces at her work and says, "Yeah, I know... but he was gonna eat Star. Eat her! Like, just go to town. I couldn't let that happen."

"I know, right? These guys are super gross." She offers a disgusted expression and sticks her tongue out. She then retrieves bandages and starts to wrap the injured arm. "Of course, your little friend in there was a most uncool guy, too. I didn't know it was possible to like bowels quite that much. I mean, yeah... we all like em, cause we kinda need em but... that bordered on the nigh sexual. Freud would have had a field day."

He chuckles softly, partially to take his mind off the searing pain where the saline solution they found has soaked into his damaged skin. "So you have been paying attention to my tutoring for psychology class after all."

She shrugs. "It's not bad, I guess. At least the old stuff. History is cool, and the Freud-dude is more history than psych anyway. Still..." She fixes him with huge, foam-green eyes. "You're avoiding the topic at hand."

"Really?"

"Your bowel loving arm. What's his story?"

"Well, it was when I really wanted to win a karate tournament... I sort of got Star to cast a spell on my arm. It was gonna just make me strong enough to beat Jeremy, or that was what I hoped... instead I got Monster Arm. He's some kind... embodiment of my shadow. And he talks like MC Chris, now, for some reason."

"Your shadow," she muses. "Freud, again?"

"Jung," he says. "Freud would be my Id. And even at my basest I don't want to go around eating bowels."

"You do eat your Abuelita's menudo."

"Totally different," he says. "That's a delicacy."

"Well, different strokes, right?"

He notices a tightness around her arresting, wide-set eyes. "Hey, Jackie," he says. "I know what it must have looked like, down there..."

"What? I don't know what you mean."

"You know..."

"Really," she says. "I don't know. This is coming totally off the wall, dude."

"You know..." He squirms. It's not just from the discomfort under the bandages she has so carefully wrapped. "After I saved Star... and she saved me. Things got a little intense."

"No freakin' duh," she says. "Star almost got burned to death, the town got mostly destroyed and your arm tried to strike out on its own as a food critic. I'm not even sure 'intense' can start to cover it."

"It's not just that," he says. "You know what I mean. With... Star. I don't know if you saw, but..."

She nestles against his good side, makes sure to avoid contact with his damaged arm, keeping her own injured hand close. "Yeah. I saw. And I know things are... special, between you two. You've got that whole Blood Moon, red string of fate thingie happening, after all. I just..."

He braces for a pain that doesn't come. She says, "I just wanted to let you know that we've got a good thing going, here. We may not have gotten prophesied or blessed or whatever by some freaky moon in hell, but I like you a whole lot. I might even love you, one day, even if I'm not ready to say that about anyone yet. Don't..." She cups his cheek with her good hand. "Don't beat yourself up over something that could have happened when the whole world was on fire around you and you almost saw your best friend die... especially when it didn't end up happening after all. Cool?"

"Yeah," he says. "Cool." He holds her close to him, strokes her shoulder gently. "I just wanted to say the same thing, I guess... I like what we have, and don't want anything to mess it up. I'm all in."

She chuckles, softly. "Dude, you have watched way too much Gilmore Girls."

"Star and I binged on friendship Thursdays for the last couple of months, getting ready for A Year in the Life. She says she's a Lorelai."

Jackie nods. "Yeah, I can see Star as a Lorelai. And you are so definitely a Rory."

"Beloved by the whole town, hooks up with Jared Padalecki and Milo Ventimiglia... who wouldn't want to be Rory?"

"Just don't go stealing any boats, dude," she says. "I know some girls are super into the whole pirate thing, but I just don't see you with a peg leg and a parrot on your shoulder, vicking pieces of eight."

"You don't want me bad gettin' bolder, cold gettin' colder?"

"Not even a little bit," she says. "Not even to deliver Colonel Sanders down to Davy Jones locker."

"We have got to stop having conversations entirely in Beastie Boys lyrics," he says. "Star and Janna think we've lost our minds."

Jackie snorts. "A magical girl warrior and somebody with Book of Dead Names in her bookbag? They're ones to talk."

"Yeah," Marco says. "If you're not down with the Beasties, you're not down with real greatness. Like, a Gilmore Girls level of greatness."

"Damn straight," she says. "And, er... just wanted to let you know... I'm all in, too. Just in case we don't make it back from this for me to tell you then."

"Yeah," he says. "I guess I ought to say this, too, then... Jackie... I love you. In case we don't make it back."

She doesn't say anything. There isn't anything to say. And then she covers his mouth with hers. And across the room, in the hearts on Star's cheeks, tiny, night dark spades prick like microscopic arrows. The pudding cups tremble, in front of her.

Her mother's darkest spell, now Star's darkest too, begins to charge.  



	7. Chapter 7

The spell charges. It doesn't take long, in the grand scheme of things, not really any more than a cell phone or iPad. Everyone is antsy, ready to go, ready to get this over with. Marco feels his skin crawl with it, actually itching. Well, he thinks, I guess it's apprehension over this and not those magical bedbugs that Star made last week because she thought they would be cute. They were, yeah, but in retrospect... not the greatest idea.

Even once the spells were charged, though, the pudding cups ready for their deadly cargo, there was nothing to do but wait for Glossaryk to formulate an appropriate strategy. "Just screaming 'banzai,' or 'have at thee' and going wild as a sugar ape in the Mewnizon Jungle or whatever it is your Johansen half is chompnig at the bit to do just isn't gonna work," he says.

"I dunno." Star nibbles the end of her wand. Now that a containment field has been erected around the plastic cups, so seemingly innocuous, it is online, again, but seems moody in the face of such an existential danger to its power. Marco, for his own part, would not trust it with anything serious but... everyone had problems. He was the one with a man-eating tentacle hiding in his arm, after all. She says, "Screaming 'have at thee' and just sort of, y'know, tossing spells around is one of my strong suits. It's kinda what I do."

"And how's it been working out for you today, Star?" When she pouts, Glossaryk says. "Look, it's like I said before, like I thought we had established... the efret are made up out of scraps of broken magic. Your magic, mostly, is like food to them. Barring a few elemental weaknesses it's apt to do more harm than good."

"Elemental weaknesses?"

"Like you were smart enough to do instinctively in your first encounter with one of the efret," he says. "They are associated with the element of fire, smokeless flame from the Sefirot ben Gevurah in fact. Water, any kind of work from the branching of Kav Smol, would aid you."

"So, my narwhals might be good?"

"Unless we end up with a marauding, zombified narhwal, yes," Glossaryk said. "That would be compounding your problem with more djinn."

"We are so gonna try to avoid that," Star says.

Janna sighs dreamily. "No matter how cool it really does sound."

"It is a good though, though," Jackie says. "The narwhals in general, I mean, not, like, making them into zombies or whatever."

Glossaryk peers at her sharply. The pink jewel set in his head glows softly. "Go on," he says.

"Well, I'm just thinking... we've got to set the efret up so that Star can trap them in the pudding cups. We're going to need a distraction. I mean..." She idly scratches at the bandage on her burned hand. "I mean, even if the efret aren't super smart, they do have that really gnarly animal intelligence. They seem to know when something can hurt them, especially if something is about to hurt them right then, and they're super fast. Star's narwhals might be able to, like, distract them. They can help to push the efret into the cups, too. That might work..." She snorts, a laugh that seems to be in bitter mockery of her usually chill attitude. "Or it might, y'know, get us all killed. Six of one, right?"

Marco speaks up. "It's a good idea. We're going to need to get creative with how we use the narwhals, though."

Star's blue eyes brighten. "Creative? Narwhals? You're speaking my language... well, obviously you are, because I'm understanding you... but yeah. Go on."

"You'll see," he says. "We're gonna have to get to wherever we're doing this, though... just... follow my lead."

"Lead on, Mewduff," she says. "Lead on."

They choose the ruins of Echo Creek Academy's football stadium for their showdown with the efret. It's poetic, in a way, Marco thinks. This is where it started, this morning. Was it just this morning? It feels like two hundred years ago... two thousand. It's been just a few hours. More practically, of course, the efret had already reduced the stadium to desolation. There wasn't anyone else to hurt, here, no one to be burned by their blazing intensity.

Out of the corner of his eye, he spies Glossaryk and Janna set up near the fifty yard line's sideline. He waves at them from his post in the center of the field. She'd protested, on the way over, that this was a bad idea. "Totally crazy," she'd said. 

"It's gonna take two magic users," Glossaryk told her, "and I don't have an apprentice. You're the closest thing around."

"But, but... I just fool around with this stuff to annoy my parents and freak out other kids," Janna said. "It's not like I have any powers, like you or Star, or anything.

"Just follow my lead," he'd told her. "I'll guide you through this. You may surprise yourself. Or, y'know, we all might die. Six of one, right?"

It wasn't as comforting as Glossaryk had probably hoped. It never is, in these situations, Marco thought. I've seen Star do the impossible, things no other human I've known--or Mewman, for that matter--could dream of ever being capable of and still... I don't have much faith that we're going to get out of this alive. Only one way to find out, though.

He had wondered, for a moment, if the efret would even show up. We're gonna look like dummies, he thinks, if they're off tearing up something else, burning something else down.

This fear doesn't last long. With a soul rending shriek to the heavens followed by a bassy roar from the bowels of hell, both efret appear over the stadium. They land at the scorched goaline, on the "O" in Opossums, but do not dare any closer at first. The smaller of the two, with its doglike snout and hooked talons, snarls and snaps at the air. The one with an elephant's trunk and long, snaky tail hisses. The air shimmers around them and what's left of the grass at that end of the football field withers into a blackened ruin, but for a moment that stretches into eternity the efret do not move an inch.

They're scared, Marco thinks. Of me... well, of Monster Arm. Join the club, guys... I'm terrified of him too. He tries to follow, finds his throat too dry. I hope that much magic power is just too good a meal for you to resist and that you don't just, like, fricasse me with your fireballs. That would suck more than just a little bit.

After forever, they decide that the potential energy represented by Marco's Monster Arm is just too much to resist. The efret creep forward, not bounding as he has seen them do before but crawling by inches instead. They come close, closer, so close that Marco feels the dark fuzz on his cheek and upper lip begin to singe. C'mon, he thinks, c'mon... in a second it's gonna be too late. You've never let me down, before. You've never let me down...

And then it happens. Star!

She calls out, from her post in the burned out husk of the coach's box, "Narwhal blast!"

Her fleet of narwhals, twelve of the coruscant, tusked cetaceans, appear and swirl in a circle around the efret. Instead of throwing themselves against their foe tusks first, however, this time the narwhals take a different strategy, one devised by Marco Diaz, the Strategy Kid.

Got a little more ring than "the Safe Kid," he thinks. And after this... Safe Kid just doesn't seem to apply anymore.

The efret do not seem to know quite what to make of these interlopers. Like the dumb, ferocious animals Marco and the others believe them to be, they roar, stamp and hiss at first to protect their hard won territory--and, after a day of such fiery reveling, Echo Creek assuredly belongs to them. When this does not work, when the narwhals do not flee, the blazing creatures launch lines of flame streaking towards the narwhals. They lance forth in crimson, orange, yellow, white shrieking at the superheated core of each bolt. 

The narwhals, each one a hardened veteran of the Butterfly monarchs' magical battles, dodge and weave around the attacks with more grace than seems possible for creatures so large. The outermost launch attacks in return, loosing spears of purple lightning from the tips of their tusks. They cascade towards the efret, strike them doing no damage, and then crackle around their clawed feet. A circle of energy dances ever tighter around the winged djinn, draws them so close together that neither can extend its wings. 

Can't have you flying away and missing the party, Marco says to himself. Especially not after we got a special treat just for you.

The lightning has no effect on the efret. As beings of smokeless flame it cannot. Its only utility, through the illusion of power, lies in keeping them contained. Soon, Marco knows, they will realize this and launch a vicious, concentrated counterattack on the narwhals. One of the beasts, the one with an elephant's trunk and cloven hoofs on a pair of its feet, already seems to have regathered some of its animal bravado and launched a half-hearted, probing attack towards the leftmost narwhal. 

The bolt of flame writes searing agony along the flying whale's side. Fire leaps out of a blackening gash in the brilliant blue skin and boiling blubber creeps out of the wound. When it strikes the fire, this blubber ignites and soon a scarlet conflagration engulfs the narwhal's entire flank from its snout to the tip of its tail. Its cascade of lighting falters as fast as it wheels away, towards the ocean, seeking cold water to put out the raging inferno that its magical flesh has become.

One whale down, Marco thinks. That's it, guys... that's the signal. Don't let us down. Don't let Star down.

They don't. The center eight narhwals, those not assigned to corraling the efret, turn sharply in the air, presenting their blowholes towards the djinn. Each wails, their ethereal calls rending air and soul, and unleashes a gout of pressurized water. The efret struggle to cover themselves with their wings but cannot. The narwhals' lightning has put too tight a ring around them. The water strikes them full on the chests, in their faces, soakes their limbs.

Marco cannot tell then, nor does he figure it out later, how to separate the shrieking of the efret from that of the steam that boils off of their flaming bodies. They retreat from the torture that water represents and, with the lightning now offering only one channel of escape, flee towards where Glossaryk and Janna wait with the pudding cups. 

Completing the ritual takes only a few seconds. It all happens with a rushing noise, a green light, the feeling of being pulled by some ineffable gravity from beyond the world as it is known. Glossaryk knows his stuff, after all, has been doing this kind of thing for more centuries than Marco is entirely comfortable imagining. Janna, on the other hand... has not. This is her first major ritual. Perhaps, Marco reflects, that is why things end up going so horribly, horribly wrong. He thinks, also, that this will be the kind of thing that they all laugh at one day... assuming any of them survive which, of course, at the moment is very debatable.

Star is there with him, at least, though. They are together under this alien sky. I guess the Blood Moon doesn't play except for keeps, he thinks. He smiles at her. "So, Star... fancy meeting you here."

"Sure, sure, yeah," she says. She sags, struggling to stand erect but not quite making it happen. She seems better than she had been right after the efret's assault on her but still far from okay. "Er... any idea where 'here' is, good buddy?"

"I've got an idea," he says, "but I don't think you're gonna like it."  
"Marco, the sky is red, there isn't a sun and my wand is kaputskis." She's listed each item on a soot smudged finger. "I'm pretty sure I'm not gonna like it. What'cha got?"

"I think that something went... wonky with Glossaryk's ritual."

"Wonky how?"

He grimaces. "I think we got caught up in it, somehow. We got pulled into those pudding cups with the efret."

"Oh." She mimics his expression. It is, he imagines, somehow cuter on her than it is on him. "Bummer."


	8. Chapter 8

They wander a quarter of a mile in what Marco assumes are circles before Star gives up and flops onto a ragged, igneous boulder suspiciously like the one they saw on arrival. She sighs. "So... no wand, no way back and not even any real idea of where we are. I am loving this day less and less... and I thought it couldn't get worse after, y'know, downtown sort of caught fire."

"I think we're in the pudding cups."

"Do the who now?"

"I think we're in the pudding cups. Or one of them. Or... something. It's kind of weird. One of those days, right?"

"Yeah. I'm glad it's just 'one of those days,' cause two of them would probably kill us."

"Don't start getting cocky on me, Star," he says.

"Huh? I think I kind of sound the opposite of cocky, Marco. I'm just glad that we haven't been literally killed yet by 'one of those freakin' days.'"

"I mean, this one hasn't, yet, but it's not even four o'clock in the afternoon."

"Oh," she says. "That's... that's a pretty good point. I'm sorry I said anything." She shivers, rubs her upper arms and puffs a silvery-white cloud of steam. "Kinda cold in here. I don't think the efret are gonna like it."

Without another thought Marco whips off his red hoodie and wraps it around her slim shoulders. She snuggles into it, like she's done many times before, closes her eyes for a brief instant and seems to enjoy the smell of soap, faint, cheap cologne and clean skin. It's comforting,, maybe, a hug that doesn't have to end. It's a hug with a light touch but... nothing's perfect, after all. "Thanks, Marco."

"You're welcome," he says. He shivers, himself, but supresses it. She'll insist on giving the hoodie back, if she sees, and he can't let that happen. The goose pimples stand out on his forearms and neck, puckered against the frigid alien air. "You have any ideas about what we need to do?"

She shrugs. "I dunno. I guess we... wait here for something to happen? Maybe for the efret to show up, or something."

"Waiting for two giant pyromaniacs with anger management problems doesn't seem like the best plan in the history of plans, Star."

"Do you have a better one?"

He flops beside her on the rock. "I guess not."

"Didn't think so." She sags against him, like she'd done after the battle at the football stadium, and lets her head sag against his shoulder. Its weight is comforting and her hair smells like tropical fruits and lavendar. It's his mom's favorite shampoo and Star has taken to using it, too. Marco finds that he strongly approves, and wonders if it's weird. Before he can overthink it she says, "I can't think of anyone I'd rather get lost in a creepy, cold, pudding cup dimension with. So that's something."

Before he can reply, wind kicks the air around them. Clouds the color of charcoal stir in the ruddy sky and particles of dust sting their cheeks. Marco raises his arm against the onslaught while Star wraps the red hoodie tighter around her shoulders and clings tightly to him. He knows in this moment that they are not alone, in this dimension, and that this uncomfortable fact has the potential of growing into a calamity at a rate swifter than they can cope with.

"Star," he says, "I think we need to find some other place to be. One that's far, far away from here."

"We weren't having much luck with that earlier, Marco," she says.

"We didn't have as much incentive then as we do now," he says. "Look."

She looks where he points. Two tall forms dance in the distance, now closer, now almost upon them. Each is made of fire, crackling flames that throw no smoke, shaped into a careful craftsman's facsimile of the human form, one male and the other female. Each is perfect but somehow lacking. It's the eyes, Marco thinks. The eyes are hollow. They see but do not perceive. He shakes his head. What does that even mean? And why are they so different, here? I don't know. It doesn't really matter. I don't guess anything will, soon.

The efret swirl into close range. The female--Marco notices that she is a little taller than the male but much slimmer--presses forward. The heat they emanate is oppressive but neither makes any move that Marco can rightly call aggressive. Any such move, after all, would have resulted in his and Star's immediate immolation and here they still sit, after all. The female efret cocks her head. She wants something, Marco can tell, but seems hesitant. She has tied and untied her blazing fingers in elaborate knots, again and again.

"You can say it," Marco says. "Whatever you want. If, er, that is what you want. I guess you can talk."

"You guess correctly," the creature says, "but it is not with you my business lies." She fixes her fiery eyes on Star. "Warrior. You stood against us and did us harm. You bound us, though we be bound as well. We..." She struggled with the words. "We are in your power."

"My power?" Star giggles. It's a little bit like a sigh. "Such as it is, I guess. And my name's not 'warrior,' by the way. It's Star." She offers her hand for an instant, reconsiders and pulls it back. "No offense. Like... I would, but I don't see this going anywhere but total tragedy."

"Understood," she says. "Star. Star. Al Najma, in my tongue."

"I like that," Marco says. "Sort of smooth. Musical."

"My language is like that for it is the language of the swirling winds and shifting sands."

"Pretty," Star says. "Er... what's your name?"

"Amal," she says. "And my mate is Alfakha. We are the shattered remnants of a madman's curse, thrown against one who wronged him. Of all our clan, once numbered in the thousands, we are the only two left. We were the doom of the enemies of Sulamayan, and the ones upon whose backs his palaces were built, and now we have wandered through the sefirot to our own doom." She snorts. It's a bitter sound, the cracking of dry logs on a raging hearth. "What will you do with us, Najma the Warrior?"

Star looks up at Amal. Her eyes, huge and blue, are ringed with tears. "I... don't know, Amal. I mean, that is one of the saddest stories I have ever heard. And I feel so bad for you, like... super bad. But you weren't the nicest guys ever in our town. I mean, you could have just asked for my help instead of rampaging all elephanty like and killing people and trying to eat me."

After a long silence, Alfakha speaks. His voice is the smooth baritone of an enormous bronze bell. "We tried as hard as we could. We begged for help, shrieked, but nothing came but gouts of flame. We were drawn to the power we sensed in your wand, in you, but could not take a form able to be understood on your plane of existence. The goetian resonance of your dimension was too alien to us and we were reduced to those bestial forms."

"No kidding bestial," Marco says. "You're the one that tried to eat Star."

"As the one that resides within you tried to eat me," Alfakha says. "We are not the only ones with much of the monster deep inside us, Marco. Perhaps in another place, another time, that which dwells in you would find expression as our animalistic natures did in your town."

Marco doesn't like to think about the arm going crazy like that in some place he cannot control it, or how close it has really come even here to ripping into Jeremy Birnbaum's soft flesh or that of the fallen townspeople after the efrets' second attack. When he cannot respond, Amal says, "We do not ask forgiveness, Najma, nor even understanding--although both would soothe what passes for our souls. We want only to be freed of the agonies of loneliness that we have felt for uncounted centuries. We need to find atonement."

"Atonement?"

"Atonement, Najma. We are the splintered remnants of a great spell, a great people reduced to this pathetic estate. We cannot be free until we are whole. We cannot be free until we are... one."

"I don't know how to do that, though," Star says. "Please. You've got to believe me. I'd do it if I could--I don't like to see anybody all miserable and elephanty--but... I don't know how to merge you back together, or meld you, or whatever the heck you're talking about. Glossaryk and I haven't covered that chapter in the book, yet!"

"We did not seek you because of your book, Najma," Alfakha says, "nor because of Sir Glossaryk of Terms, though he is a magical scholar of the highest order. We sought you because of the bond you share with your companion--the one whose colors you wear."

In the exact moment that Star quizzically asks, "Marco?" he says, equally confused, "Me?"

"Indeed," Amal says. "We were drawn to you, to both of you, because of the red rope of fate--more than a string it is made of many, many woven strands that make it strong--tying you together and the sheet of blood a moon threw on you."

"The blood moon," Star says.

Marco rolls his eyes. "See?" he says. "What did I tell you, Star. You should never have gone to that jerk's ball. Now we've got... this to deal with."

She shushes him so that Amal can speak. "Even if you had not attended Tom's ball--and know that we were offended that he did not invite us, and would know why--the red rope would have still lain between you, strong and pulsing with life. The blood moon cannot shine light on what is not there already, Marco and Najma. Though you are young you are both wise enough to know this."

Marco does, and when he looks deep into Star's eyes he knows that she does, too. It's not the fresh, sweet, honey-flavored sea-foam of what he shares with Jackie but, isn't always fun or even something that feels like love but... what lies between those huge, blue eyes and his is bigger than the both of them put together. Some infinitely gentle, infinitely suffering thing. The words spring unbidden to his mind. We just learned that in school, didn't we? T.S. Eliot. Star didn't like him, because Mewman poets always rhyme and write in frottola, but it made me feel something, something that moved so far down that it felt like the bottom of me shifting. I went down deep, in my own way.

Did I, Marco Diaz, dip down? He pushes the thought away. It's not something that can help them, right now. He says, "Okay, so assuming what you're saying is true, and we can help you... do you have any notion as to how we might be able to do it? Because I'm fresh out of ideas, here. I mean, you're together here in the pudding cup, at least, and not all freaky-styley like you were on Earth."

"We are together but apart," Alfakha says. "To be at one, to atone, is more than being on the same plane of existence. We cannot live as we should unless we achieve atonement and are as we were when Sulayaman first called us forth from the golden key he wore on a chain about his waist."

"Which tells us absolutely zilch," Marco says. "I mean, the golden key and ancient wizard and stuff are cool but... I'm not getting a whole lot from you guys, here."

"What my mate says is quite simple, Marco Diaz," Amal says. "It is quite simple, though you choose to not hear what he tells you. You must teach us, you and Najma."

"Teach you?" Star asks. "Teach you what, exactly?"

"You must teach how to be at one, teach us to atone," Alfakha says. "Then we will be as we were and our power will allow us to help you to escape this place. Four our own part, we will not move from it. To be at one will be enough to satisfy us for all eternity."

"Okay, then," Star says. "You want to be together, er... at one. Whatever you say. Now..." She exhales, sharply, blowing an errant strand of golden hair out of her eyes. "Now we've just gotta figure out how to get you guys there."


	9. Chapter 9

"Oh, jeez. Oh, jeez. Oh, jeez... I've really messed this one up, haven't I?" Janna frets, nibbles smudged fingernails that are already ragged and tugs at the dark locks of hair escaping her woolen green cap. "What the heck happened here?"

"They were draw into the vessels," Glossaryk said. "And you didn't mess up. Well, I mean, yeah... you did mess up, a lot of things, technically. This was your first ritual more complicated than trying to make a lucky penny or send text messages to the shade of Robert Southey. You were bound to muff it a little bit, but overall you didn't actually do too badly. Nothing that would have caused this, at the very least."

"So..." Jackie now. "So... what did?"

"Y'know, I don't really know," Glossaryk says. "I mean, Janna at least semi-intelligently went through the motions of what I told her to do, after all, and the spell that I crafted was pretty air tight. I mean, nothing is perfect in magic--the whole concept of crafting a spell and not just blasting away like Star used to is to minimize the effect of those random variables. The vessels opened a portal to their pocket dimension just like I had intended, and the narwhals did great with driving the efret towards it but..." He shrugs. "Like I said, I don't know. It could have been that Star and Marco were standing too close to the portal--remember what happened to poor Bon-Bon?"

Janna takes off her hat and clutches it to her breast. "Bon-Bon... you were just too precious for this world."

"Right," he says. "Well, that's one thing that could have happened, here. I mean, I would say that the vessel's pull was too strong, that would have been possible, but I made darned sure that it wasn't. The field of eldritch actually was titrated exactly the right amount for drawing in the efret and not anything that makes its home on this plane."

"But, Glossaryk," Jackie says, "Star's home isn't on this place. She's mewman."

"If it had just taken her then I'd say you were right and 'my bad' for making a huge mistake," he says, "and I'm glad you're thinking--you're a whole lot better at it than your boyfriend, by the way--but said boyfriend is the little fly in this particular ointment. The vessels didn't just take Star, they took him too. That leaves only one, super aggravating possibility."

"What?" They say it together and for once Janna doesn't shout jinx and inform Jackie that she owes her a Coke.

"The very real, very disturbing possibility that Star, Marco and the efret are linked, somehow. That their fates are bound in some inextricable way until they finish whatever work destiny has for them together."

"Like the influence that the Blood Moon has on Marco and Star?"

"Kinda sorta," he says. "Maybe. I'm going to bring in someone who sort of specializes in these kinds of spells to help me, here."

"Who?" Jackie asks.

"The one who cast the Blood Moon's light on them in the first place," Glossaryk says. He offers a tiny, toothy grin. It's cheery enough to terrify Jackie and, on a level deeper than rationality, excite Janna. "Buckle up, girls. We're going to Hell!"

Tom's dimensional home is not quite Hell, at least not the way that Jackie has grown up hearing the concept expressed. It is aesthetically perfect, sure. Spires of flame, somehow freezing cold, climb to unknowable heights. Stalactites and stalagmites crawl from the floors and ceilings of the drafty, miserable cavern and the creatures that crawl and writhe around their feet are only slightly less disturbing than the ones that moan and gibber unseen in the distance. Some weep with eyes scabbed over by leprous skin while others whisper secrets that should never be told from mouths turned the wrong way.

The difference is that, unlike depictions of the Abyss she'd learned about in church and Sunday School as a little girl, none of these weird, cave-dwelling nightmares seem particularly miserable. Wasn't that the point of Hell? Jackie shakes her head. This is not the place to be worrying about the finer points of theology and the afterlife.

"So yeah, kids," Glossaryk says. "You're gonna want to keep your hands and arms inside the ride at all times. That goes double for you, Janna."

She's caught in the act of reaching out to pet a horned imp that is in the process of simultaneously eating and excreting its rear legs. She bats large, dark eyes rimmed in thick lashes. "I have no idea what you could possibly talking about."

"Right, uh-huh," he says. "Just... don't do anything stupid, okay? I know that asking Earth teenagers, or any teenagers, to do that for me is kind of an exercise in futility but... be careful. This isn't the safest branch on the cosmic tree."

Janna shrugs, seems to only half believe, and follows when they move out. The truth of Glossaryk's words become readily apparent less than a hundred feet down the trail of sharp rocks, though, when an enormous, horrible scraping noise echoes in the darkness behind them.

Jackie turns on her heel--her ears have always been sharp--and catches half a glimpse of the definition of madness. It's one of those weird cats, maybe, with the human faces. She's heard Star and Marco talking about them, before. This one wears a coat of black and white, bloodstained fur and a long trail of glowing, pulsating organs drag behind it in the dirt. The eyes that lock with hers are an epic poem of hate and madness set in an indescribably cunning, cruel nest of wrinkles. It hisses. "Look away. Look away lest ye join me."

Jackie does so without hesitation and, in an instant, the apparition is gone. And Marco, like, went to a prom, here, or something? She thinks. She chuckles to herself.

"What?" Janna says, beside her. "Something tickle you? Cause if something did around these parts... I dunno if I'd be laughing or running."

"Nothing, nothing," she says. "Just... I never expected that Marco would be way more metal than I am."

"Huh?"

"Don't worry about it," she says. "I think we're almost there." A gothic mansion, much finer than the rough hewn cavern, grows in the distance. In spite of their journey nearing its end, however, the sure knowledge that they'll be out of here soon, Jackie's hand does find Janna's. Their fingers curl together and Jackie cannot escape the feeling that she is holding on tight to the shreds of her sanity.

Light fingers rest on her shoulder, on the other side. She doesn't notice, at first, but jumps when she does. It could be anything, literally any surreal demon, after all and... who want's that getting all handsy?

"Hey, hey, calm down. Let's not get all crazy." The figure she does see, when she looks back, is way less terrible than it could be. Sure he's got unnaturally colored skin and hair, three eyes and horns but... one of her best friends occasionally turns into a butterfly. Jackie doesn't like to be, y'know, racist. Besides, his voice is smooth, his manner nonthreatening and, after everthing else she has seen here, this guy hardly registers on the creep-o-meter. He offers a smile that reveals sharp, elongated canines. "So... you must be Jackie, the girl who stole my buddy Marco's heart?"

"Yeah," Jackie says. She offers a smile. "You're Marco's bud?" She shrugs and offers her hand. "Got me at a disadvantage, dude."

"Oh! Sorry." He takes her hand and actually kisses it. His lips are warm--very warm, to the point of being almost uncomfortable--but somehow she doesn't find the situation as unnerving as she probably should. I must be going nuts, she thinks. Six months ago I would have been way more freaked out by having a demon that's apparently friends with my boyfriend kiss my hand.

He speaks again, breaking her reverie. "So, I'm Tom." He preens a little. "Kind of a big deal around here."

Now it's Janna's turn. "You're Tom? Star's Tom?"

"Well, yeah," he says. "Not Star's Tom, anymore I guess, but still Tom. Hi, Janna."

Marco must have mentioned her, too, Jackie thinks. How often does my guy hang out in Hell? It's kinda... weirding me out a little.

Janna nods, strokes her chin, and says. "Y'know, you're way cuter than I'd have imagined."

His brow wrinkles. "Excuse me?"

"Well," she says, "Star told us that you could be, and I quote 'a super powered douche-rabaska filled with Vikings made from turds.' I remember cause it was sort of poetic and since you were a magical creature... well..." She shrugs. "You could have been, okay? I mean, have you seen some of the guys hanging around this place?"

He chuckles and cringes. Jackie is impressed... her friend has done many odd things in her time but taking a demon prince aback is new even for her. Janna presses on, oblivious to his discomfort. "I do have one question for you, Tom."

"Yes?"

"Do you know a guy named Zozo? I've been contacting him on my Ouija board for a while, now, and for the last few weeks he has just... vanished. Is he out possessing someone else?" She pouts. "That's like the demon version of cheating on someone, isn't it?"

All three of Tom's eyes grow wide. "Don't tell me that you're Jannstar the Magnificent?"

She nods. "That's my magician name. Cause I'm Janna, and Star is the one who taught me spells that really work, and I am pretty magnificent, after all." She frowns. "What are you staring at?"

"Just... just... nothing," he says. Tom runs a hand through his purple hair. "Do you have any idea what the concepts of 'erotomania' or a 'restraining order' are?"

"Well, duh," she says. "There's lots about them on Criminal Minds and SVU but I don't recognize them as, like, applying to me in any way." Her smile is wide, bright and somehow even toothier than that of the demon standing in front of her. "Was there anything else?"

"No, not right now, at least," Glossaryk says. "Although I'm going probably going to confiscate your Ouija board later one." He places his hands together and smiles at Tom. "So, my boy... douche-rabaska or not, can you help us to understand what's going on with the vessels?"

"Vessels?"

"These." Jackie produces the pudding cups from her backpack. "Glossaryk and Janna performed a ritual to capture the efret but... Marco and Star got drawn into the cups, too. We think it might have something to do with the light that the Blood Moon shone on them and since you're the one who cast the Blood Moon spell, well..." She falters.

It doesn't matter. He seems to have caught the gist of it. "You think that because I cast the Blood Moon spell that I might have some knowledge about how to get them out, or at least about what's going on." He takes the pudding cups from her in slender, sure fingers. "Well, Blue Dude, Little Mermaid and Psycho Baby, I've got some good news and some bad news for you."

"And?"

"I did cast the Blood Moon spell, originally," Tom says, "and I do know how you would--in theory--go about getting our wayward Starship and my fellow Mackie Hand fanatic back."

"Sounds like the good news to me," Jackie says.

"But in theory kinda makes it sound like there's bad news coming really, really fast on its heels," Janna says.

"Too true," Tom says. "Because the only way I know of for Marco and Starship to navigate their way out of the vessel is to somehow wrangle a wish from the efret."

"A wish?"

"Well, efret are djinn," Tom says. "Ergo, as djinn, they grant wishes. The wishes usually suck and you end up wishing that you hadn't wished in the first place but..." He shrugs. "There's really nothing else to do for it. I mean, we're just gonna have to trust in Star that she'll think her way around all the pitfalls of letting one of the djinn grant your wish, wait and see what happens."

"What about Marco?" Jackie says.

Tom chuckles. "Like I said, we're gonna trust in Starship. Cause Marco is my best frenemy and all but..." He shrugs. "I wouldn't be surprised if he's been burnt to a cinder by now."

Jackie opens her mouth to reply. It's gonna be a good one, too, all about how Marco is a cool, brave guy, how he (and, to be honest, his freaky ass arm) had saved Star from the efret only a few hours ago but... things get weird before she can even get the first word out. The pudding cups begin to spin, glow, and dance with each other. She says, instead, "Er, guys... I don't know much about magic or whatever but... are they supposed to be doing that?"

"I dunno," Janna says. "I don't think so."

The cups have begun to roar and shake, now. "I do know one thing," Glossaryk says.

"What?" The sides have begun to bulge and groan against something enormous.

"We're gonna want to take cover behind that rock over there," he says, and points towards a particularly broad stalagmite. "And we're gonna want to do it, like, yesterday." 


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the end of this journey we've been taking together for the last ten weeks. Hopefully it's something a little satisfying cause we're about to go on a season-ending hiatus with what I imagine is a sad Star... and sad Stars make me sad, too.

"So, basically, I have no idea what we're gonna do for you people," Star says. "I mean, I know that you said you need to be at one, or whatever, whatever that means but... I don't see how we're gonna get you there."

"To be at one seems so natural for you and your companion, Najma," Alfakha muses. A flaming smile plays at the corners of his lips. "We had thought that teaching this secret to us would prove no problem at all."

"Well, it's not like Marco and I just sit around thinking about how awesome it is to have had the Blood Moon shining on us," Star says. She waves her hands. "That would be weird. I mean, when you've got a special relationship the last thing you want to do is to make it weird, and that would do that. Y'know. Make it weird."

"I do not follow."

"Like, okay," she says. "The most important part of our relationship, our friendship, is that we like to do stuff together. Marco and me, and usually Janna and Jackie now, too, we have Friendship Thursdays. We all pile onto the couch in the living room in Marco's house and watch something on hulu or Netflix or DVD."

"So the secret to atonement is streaming media content?" Alfakha's expression darkens. "That seems more like a stealthy advertisement for an entertainment app."

"Okay, number one you know more about viral marketing than an ancient fire spirit should and two, it's not so much about what you're actually doing as it is the company you keep doing it. You and Amal should do lots of stuff together... er... don't you already, kinda? You seemed to be pretty much in concert with each other while you were burning Echo Creek to the ground all day, today."

"Our physical forms were in one place but we could not communicate," Amal says. "The destruction was our despairing scream to the cosmos."

"Lots of despairing screams all around, then," Marco says. "What do you two like, then? Apart from burning stuff, I assume."

"To read poetry to my love," Alfakha says, "or to compose odes to her beauty."

"And I sing the praises of my love," Amal says, "that his flames may burn more brightly than the star hung heavens."

"See?" Marco says. "You're halfway there. Jackie never says anything about me burning brightly or... y'know. That."

Star purses her lips. "To be fair, if you were burning brightly it would be a whole lot cooler of her to, like, dump a bucket of water on you. Just to be fair."

"True," he says. "But the point is that you are already so interwoven with each other that if you were any more at one you would cease to be individuals. And that would be terrible."

"What do you mean?" Amal asks. "Did not Rumi the scholar write, 'Lovers do not meet, finally, but are in each other all along?'"

"Sure," Marco says, "and the unity that you're describing is important, but think about this... if you and Alfakha were truly unified, truly one being... would either of you exist separately anymore?

When they do not answer, Star presses the attack. "Yeah, I mean, being together is great and all, but if you're just one big blob of fiery... fire person... then neither of you exists to love the other. One of my grandmas, Martina the Dualist, wrote in the spellbook that 'I' and 'You' must both exist for love to happen. When love is just one person..." Star grimaces. "It just gets kinda... sticky."

"So what you want to be," Marco says, "are two hearts that beat as one. That's what a great sage from my land named Bono said a long time ago. It's not in a spellbook, or anything, but it was the turning point in a great war."

Star narrows her eyes at him. "I thought it was just on U2's War, which you said was a great album."

He shrugs. "Six, half-a-dozen..." He offers the efret a smile. "So... you two have any ideas?"

"Yes," Amal says. "We must dance, as you did under the Blood Moon, and you must dance with us. You must teach us to be as you say. The howling wind of this dimension will provide a music infernal."

The winds grow loud around them. Cold, piercing wind blows stinging sand into Marco's face. He and Star huddle close together for protection from the ferocious gale. And then scorching, cosmic fire flows around them in an ever tightening circle. Amal and Alfakha have begun to dance.

When their sinuous reel is finally complete, one creature coils in the icy air where two danced before. It's no longer human in shape although, blessedly, this doesn't look anything like the twisted monsters that attacked Echo Creek earlier, either. Don't get comfortable, Marco tells himself. Just because it looks like that doesn't mean its any less dangerous. They're any less dangerous. Whatever. Miss Heinous just looked like a little old lady and... yeah. Don't let your guard down, Safe Kid. Be safe.

The only term to describe what hovers in front of them is draconic, and even that somehow falls short. The limbs are long and clean, the skull a golden helmet that promises wisdom and danger. Wings of fire stretch from horizon to horizon. Marco believes that he will remember what this being looks like for all the days of his life just as surely as he knows he'll forget what it looks like as soon as they're not here. The efret, whole and complete, will remain a concept lingering on the edge of his tongue until he's an old man with a grey goatee lying in sheets that smell like sweat and bed sores.

Star, who could and has talked to a brick wall, essays forth against the silence. "So... hi. Hi! Er... Amal. Alfakha. What should I call you, now?"

The voice comes from everywhere at once and nowhere in particular, from the edges of the universe and inside their own heads. "We have no name that you need call us. We are complete. You exist apart."

"Yeah, that's cool, yeah," she says. "It's cool you're complete. I dunno how we showed you but... that's great. I still have to call you something." She chews on the tip of her wand and thinks it over. "How about Amalakha? That sounds pretty."

It chuckles and the cosmic winds dance. "It does indeed, Najma. That shall be my name, from now on, since 'we' exist no longer. What think you of my union?"

"It. Is. Awesome," Star says. "I always wanted a dragon, when I was little. I mean, you're not a dragon-dragon, but you're close. And that is the coolest beans. Well, not literally. You're still made of fire. But still."

"Thank you," it says. "And thank you for showing me the way. Thank you for showing me atonement. I would have never been at one without you."

"What do you mean?" Marco asks. "We didn't really show you anything."

"Your bond with Najma," it says. "The Blood Moon. The light it cast taught me to be at one. My thanks to you are endless."

"I appreciate it," Star says. "But what I'd really love is to be able to go home. We're kinda stuck here. Not that it's not nice, but..."

"You would prefer to be among your own kind," it says. "You are not complete as I am. I understand." The infinitely wise eyes take on a sly cast. "You know... djinn are known for making deals and granting wishes, Najma."

"Really?"

"Yeah," Marco says. "I know all about the kind of wishes that djinn grant. I did take a unit of mythology last year. Don't trust it, Star. We'll end up with two heads or living in a black hole or a nebula or... something."

She peers as closely as she can at the blazing form without developing retinopathy. "He's got a point," she says. "How can I be sure that I can trust you?"

"You did us a fine service," it says. "Fine service must be rendered unto you. I would not be remembered by history as ungrateful or churlish."

"Okay," she says. "I guess. I mean, it's not like we're gonna get a better offer, right?"

"Make your wish, Najma, and return home."

"Okay, then," Star says. "I wish, Amalakha, for me and Marco to return to our friends. And by that I mean Glossaryk, Janna and Jackie, not, like, for us to be dropped off in some weird place where we might have friends or where the concept of friends was invented or... something. Just send us to those three and we'll be cool."  
"Did I not say that you would be returned from whence you came?"

"Yeah, and that's cool and all but... I just wanted to be, y'know, really super, super sure that nothing goofy was going to happen to us."

The iridescent lips curl away from teeth that could be so, so cruel. Marco remembers, with a chill, how one of the efret had crouched over Star's prone body on the street after she'd been struck by its lancing beam of flame. We did right by them, he thinks, and I even think they'll keep their promise and send us back to our friends but... I'm not going to ever forget what they did to my town. What they tried to do to Star. He does stop himself, at least, before thinking of her as "his" Star. This isn't a harem anime, after all, and that has always been his least favorite genre.

The efret speaks. The moment has passed, blessedly, without incident. "Do not worry, Najma. You will be returned, with your companion, to your friends. There would normally be a touch of the irony that I so love in wish granting because they seem to be visiting a Hell dimension but... something tells me that these are just the circles that you travel in." It chuckles and fire crackles in the hearths of a universe. "The women of your family have always had a touch of the darkness in them."

"You talkin' about multiple-greats G-ma Eclipsa?"

  
"Indeed, but to say more would be telling," it says. "And now hold tight to each other and let mt magic wash over your. It will look like flame but..." It shrugs. "You will have to trust me."

"Don't really have much of a choice," Marco mutters. They hug each other close and what does indeed look like a sheet of fire approaches, covers them, wraps them tight. The universe expands and contracts, swirls as it did when they at the goblin dogs.

A moment and eternity later they stand, still wrapped in a tight embrace, on the plush carpet in Tom's game-room. He is there and so are Glossaryk, Janna and Jackie. Marco blushes when he sees her. This must look awkward, he thinks. I mean, I know that it isn't what it looks like but... this is like getting caught playing Seven Minutes in Heaven. Just not a good look.

If she notices, though, she doesn't say anything and throws her arms around both their necks. "Jeez guys," she says. "We were worried to death about you. Don't ever do that to us again. Don't ever do that to me again."

"Get sucked into a pocket dimension by a pair of terrifying djinn?" Marco asks. "No ma'am, I won't."

She releases the embrace--they all do, lest things grow truly awkward--and punches his arm. "Totally not what I meant, dork, and you know it. How do we even put up with you?" She tosses Star a wink.

"It's cause we're the coolest," she says, and offers the wink back. Everything is cool. The ocean's surface laps gently against the shore but... it does until there's a storm, doesn't it? There isn't one for now.

Tom speaks. "So how did you manage to get away from them, Starship? I mean I know it had to be you. This doofus couldn't get away from a really pissed off loaf of bread."

Before Marco can take the bait, Star says, "Number one that loaf of bread that attacked him was really pissed and it took all my warnicorns to stop it and two, I didn't escape, or anything, I helped them and they sent me back."

"Really? No tricks?"

"Really. They wanted to be at one, whatever that meant, and I helped them achieve it."

"They needed the stability of each other, the stability that only true oneness can offer," Glossaryk says. "And in other news the goetian matrix of the vessels has stabilized, too. They're not going to explode and destroy an area of your planet roughly the size of Eurasia!"

Jackie frowns. "Er... that was an option?"

Glossaryk thinks a moment. "I don't want to lie to you, but I also don't want to upset you so... the only answer I feel comfortable in giving is 'pudding.'"

"The only acceptable answers are 'yes,' 'two' or 'chicken,'" Janna says. Off all their looks she continues. "What? I watch the Gilmore Girls too, you know."

"Yeah," Star says. "But post season four. I know you're into the freaky-deaky stuff but... that's just wrong."

She shrugs. "I kinda like Colin and Finn. They're dreamy in all the wrong ways." She offers a wink that sidles a little close to Tom than he should probably be comfortable with, in Marco's opinion. "That's how I like my men, after all."

"Wait a minute," Marco says. "Is no one going to discuss how our brilliant plan to capture the efret almost destroyed Eurasia?"

"As a general rule," Star says, "thinking about that kind of stuff after the fact just makes ye crazy in yer brain." She offers a big grin. "So, anybody got any food?"

"Yes, two or chicken," Tom says. "That's always the right answer." When everyone stares at him, especially Janna, he says, "What? Paris didn't reach her zenith until the college years, and apart from seven it's still pretty good. Someone's going to a special Hell for that one, believe me."

"So... you got the chicken or you just quoting?" Star asks.

"Er... it's hell chicken."

She giggles. "I don't care if it's mud shaped into a chicken, I'm starving. Let's get to it."


End file.
